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PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 



THE 



POETICAL WORKS 



OF 



PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 



EDITED BY 

EDWARD DOWDEN 



NEW YORK 

THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO, 

PUBLISHERS 



c \Si,^- ^ 



TR540 2 






^ 



CONTENTS. 



Introduction by Edward 
DOWDEN 

Preface by Mrs. Shelley to 
First Collected Edition, 
1839 

Postscript in Second Edition 
OF 1839 

Preface by Mrs. Shelley to 
THE Volume of Posthumous 
Poems, published in 1824 

Queen Mab (1813) .... 

Shelley's Notes 

Note by Mrs. Shelley . . . 

The D.«mon of the World 
A Fragment (181 5) . . 

Alastor; or the Spirit of 
Solitude (1815) . . . 

Note by Mrs. Shelley . . . 
The Revolt of Islam (181 7) 

Note by Mrs. Shelley . . . 

Prince Athanase ; A Frag- 
ment (1817) .... 

Rosalind and Helen (181 7-18) 
Note by Mrs. Shelley . . . 

Julian and Maddalo (1818) 
Note by Mrs. Shelley . . . 

Prometheus Unbound (1819) 
Note by Mrs. Shelley . . . 

The Cenci (1819) .... 
Note by Mrs. Shelley . . , 



19 



22 



23 
27 
60 
91 



94 

104 
116 

117 
224 

226 

232 
247 
248 
259 

259 

304 
308 
352 



PAGE 

The Mask of Anarchy C1819) 355 

Note by Mrs. Shelley .... 360 

Peter Bell the Third (1819) 361 

Note by Mrs. Shelley .... 375 

Letter to Maria Gisborne 

(1820) 376 

The Witch of Atlas (1820) . 381 

Note by Mrs, Shelley .... 393 

CEdipus Tyrannus; or Swell- 
foot THE Tyrant (1820) . 394 
Note by Mrs. Shelley .... 408 

Epipsychidion (1821) .... 409 

Adonais (1821) 422 

Hellas (1821) 434 

Shelley's Notes 453 

Note by Mrs. Shelley .... 455 

Fragments of an Unfinished 

Drama (1822) 456 

Charles the First (1822) . . 461 

The Triumph of Life (1822) . 474 

Early Poems (1814-15) — 

Stanza, written at Bracknell . . 485 

Stanza — April 1814 . . . . 485 

To Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin 485 

To : " Yet look on me — 

take not thine eyes away " . 486 

Mutability 486 

On Death: "The pale, the cold, 

and the moony smile " . . 486 
A Summer Evening Churchyard, 

Lechlade, Gloucestershire . 487 



m 



IV 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Early Poems — 

To Coleridge 488 

To Wordsworth 488 

Feelings of a Republican on the 

Fall of Bonaparte .... 488 
Lines. "The cold earth slept 

below" 489 

Note by Mrs. Shelley .... 489 

Poems written in 1816 — 

The Sunset 490 

Hymn to Intellectual Beauty . 491 
Lines written in the Vale of 

Chamouni 492 

Mont Blanc 492 

Fragment : Home 495 

Fragment : Helen and Henry . 495 

Note by Mrs. Shelley .... 495 

Poems written in 1817 — 

Marianne's Dream 496 

To Constantia, Singing . . . 498 

To Constantia 499 

Fragment : To One Singing . . 499 

A Fragment : To Music • . . 499 

Another Fragment to Music . . 499 

" Mighty Eagle " 499 

To the Lord Chancellor . . . 499 

To "William Shelley .... 501 
From the Original Draft of the 

Poem to William Shelley . . 502 
On Fanny Godwin . ... 502 
Lines: "That time is dead for- 
ever, child " 502 

Death: "They die— the dead 

return not — misery" . . . 502 

Otho 502 

Fragments supposed to be parts 

of Otho 503 

Fragment : A Cloud-Chariot . 503 
Fragment: To One freed from 

Prison ........ 503 



Poems written in 181 7 — 

Fragment : Satan at Large . . 504 

Fragment : Unsatisfied Desire . 504 

Fragment: Love Immortal . . 504 

Fragment : Thoughts in Solitude 504 

Fragment: The Fight was o'er 504 

A Hate-Song 504 

Lines to a Critic 504 

Ozymandias 505 

Note by Mrs. Shelley .... 505 

Poems written in 1818 — 

To the Nile 506 

Passage of the Apennines . . 506 

The Past 507 

To Mary : "O Mary dear, 

that you were here "... 507 

On a Faded Violet 507 

Lines written among the Euga- 

nean Hills 507 

Scene from " Tasso " . . . . 511 

Song for " Tasso " . . . . 511 

To Misery 512 

Stanzas written in Dejection, 

near Naples 513 

The Woodman and the Nightin- 
gale 513 

Marenghi 515 

Sonnet: "Lift not the painted 

veil which those who live " . 518 

Fragment: To Byron . . . . 518 

Fragment: Appeal to Silence . 518 

Fragment: The Stream's Margin 519 

Fragment: A Lost Leader . . 519 

Fragment: The Vine amid Ruins 519 

Note by Mrs= Shelley .... 519 

Poems written in 1819 — 
Lines written during the Castle- 

reagh Administration . . . 520 
Song to the Men of England . 520 
Similes for two Political Charac- 
ters of 1819 521 



CONTENTS. 



Indian 



Poems written in 1819 — 
Fragment: To the People of 

England 

Fragment: "What Men gain 

fairly" 

A New National Anthem . 
Sonnet: England in 1 819 
An Ode : To the Assertors of 

Liberty . . . 
Cancelled Stanza: "Gather, O 

gather " . . . . 
Ode to Heaven . 
Ode to the West Wind 
An Exhortation 
The Indian Serenade . 
Cancelled Passage of the 

Serenade .... 
To Sophia [Miss Stacey] 
To William Shelley 
To William Shelley . 
To Mary Shelley . . 
To Mary Shelley . 
On the Medusa of Leonardo da 

Vinci in the Florentine Gallery 
Love's Philosophy . 
Fragment : " Follow to the deep 

wood's Weeds " ... 
The Birth of Pleasure . 
Fragment : Love the Universe 
Fragment: "A gentle Story of 

two Lovers young " 
Fragment: Love's Atmosphere 
Fragment: Fellowship of Souls 
Fragment : Reminiscence and 

Desire 

Fragment: Forebodings . 
Fragment: Visitations of Calm 

Thoughts 

Fragment: Poetry and Music . 
Fragment : The Tomb of Mem- 
ory 

Fragment : Song of the Furies . 



521 

521 
522 
522 

522 

523 

523 

524 

525 
526 

526 
526 
526 
527 
527 
527 

527 
528 

528 

528 
528 

528 
528 
529 

529 
529 

529 
529 

529 
529 



Poems written in 18 19 — 
Fragment: " Wake the Serpent 

not " 530 

Fragment: Rain and Wind . . 530 

Fragment : A Tale Untold . . 530 

Fragment: To Italy .... 530 

Fragment: Wine of Eglantine . 530 

Fragment: A Roman's Chamber 530 

Fragment: Rome and Nature . 530 
Variation of the Lyric to the 

Moon 530 

Cancelled Stanza of the Mask of 

Anarchy 531 

Note by Mrs. Shelley . . . . 531 

Poems written in 1820 — 

The Sensitive Plant . . . . 531 
Cancelled Passage of the Sensi- 
tive Plant 536 

A Vision of the Sea .... 536 

The Cloud 540 

To a Skylark 541 

Ode to Liberty 542 

Cancelled Passage of the Ode to 

Liberty 547 

To : " I fear thy kisses, 

gentle maiden " 547 

Arethusa 548 

Song of Proserpine, while gather- 
ing Flowers on the Plain of 

Enna 549 

Hymn of Apollo 549 

Hymn of Pan 550 

The Question 550 

The Two Spirits: An Allegory . 550 

Ode to Naples 552 

Autumn: A Dirge 555 

The waning Moon 555 

To the Moon 555 

Death: "Death is here and 

death is there " 55^ 

Liberty 555 



VI 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Poems written in 1820 — 

Summer and "Winter .... 556 

The Tower of Famine . . . 556 

An Allegory 557 

The World's Wanderers . . , 557 
Sonnet: "Ye hasten to the 

grave! What seek ye there " 557 

Lines to a Reviewer . , . . 557 

Fragment of a Satire on Satire . 558 

Good Night 558 

Buona Notte 559 

Orpheus 559 

Fiordispina 561 

Time Long Past 562 

Fragment : The Deserts of Sleep 562 

Fragment : Consequence . . . 562 

Fragment : A Face .... 563 

Fragment: Weariness . . . 563 
Fragment: Hope, Fear, and 

Doubt 563 

Fragment: "Alas! this is not 

what I thought Life was " . 563 

Fragment: Milton's Spirit . . 563 

Fragment: Unrisen Splendor . 563 

Note by Mrs. Shelley .... 563 

Poems written in 1821 — 

Dirge for the Year 564 

To Night 565 

Time 565 

Lines: "Far, far away, O ye " 565 

From the Arabic : An Imitation 566 

To Emilia Viviani 566 

The Fugitives 566 

To : " Music, when soft 

voices die " 567 

Song: "Rarely, rarely, comest 

thou" 567 

Mutability 568 

Lines written on hearing the 
News of the Death of Napo- 
leon 568 



Poems written in 1821 — 

Sonnet : Political Greatness . . 569 

The Aziola 569 

A Lament : " O world ! O life ! 

Otime" 569 

Remembrance 569 

To Edward Williams . . . . 570 

To : "One word is too 

often profaned " .... 571 

To : "When passion's 

trance is overpast " . . . 571 

A Bridal Song 571 

Another Version of the Same . 571 

Another Version of the Same . 572 

Love, Hope, Desire, and Fear . 572 

Prologue to Hellas 573 

Fragments written for Hellas . 576 
Fragment: "I would not be a 

King" 576 

Ginevra 576 

Evening: Ponte a Mare, Pisa . 580 

The Boat on the Serchio . . . 580 

Music 582 

Sonnet to Byron 582 

Fragment on Keats .... 582 
Fragment: " Methought I was a 

Billow in the Crowd " . . . 583 

To-morrow 583 

Stanza: " If I walk in Autumn's 

even " 5^3 

Fragment : A Wanderer . . . 583 
Fragment : Peace surrounding 

Life 583 

Fragment: "I Faint, I Perish 

with my Love " 5^3 

Fragment: "The Lady of the 

South" 583 

Fragment: The Awakener . . 583 

Fragment : Rain 583 

Fragment: Ambushed Dangers 583 
Fragment: "And that I walk 



CONTENTS. 



vu 



PAGH 

Poems written in 1821 — 
Fragment: "The rude V/ind is 

singing" ....... 584 

Fragment: " Great Spirit " . . 584 
Fragment: "O Thou Immortal 

Deity" 584 

Fragment: False Laurels and 

True . 584 

Note by Mrs. Shelley .... 584 

Poems written in 1822 — 

The Zucca 586 

The Magnetic Lady to her 

Patient 588 

Lines: "When the Lamp is 

shattered" 588 

To Jane : The Invitation . . . 589 

To Jane : The Recollection . . 590 

"With a Guitar, to Jane . . . 591 
To Jane: "The keen Stars were 

twinkling " 592 

A Dirge 592 

Lines written in the Bay of Lerici 592 
Lines: "We meet not as we 

parted" 593 

The Isle 593 

Fragment: To the Moon . . 593 

Epitaph 593 

Note by Mrs. Shelley .... 593 

Translations — 

Homer's Hymn to Mercury 

(1820) 596 

Homer's Hymn to Castor and 

Pollux 612 

Homer's Hymn to the Moon . 612 

Homer's Hymn to the Sun . . 613 
Homer's Hymn to the Earth: 

Mother of AH 613 

Homer's Hymn to Minerva . . 614 

Homer's Hymn to Venus (1818) 614 

The Cyclops of Euripides (i 819) 615 



PAGE 

Translations — 
Epigrams — 

To Stella 627 

Kissing Helena 627 

Spirit of Plato 627 

Circumstance 627 

Fragment of the Elegy on the 

Death of Adonis .... 627 
Fragment of the Elegy on the 

Death of Bion 628 

From the Greek of Moschus 

(1816) 628 

Pan, Echo, and the Satyr . . 629 
From Virgil's Tenth Eclogue . 629 
Sonnet from the Italian of Dante 

(1816) 629 

The First Canzone of the Con- 

vito (1820) 630 

Matilda gathering Flowers (1820) 631 
Fragment adapted from the Vita 

Nuova of Dante .... 632 
Sonnet from the Italian of Caval- 

canti 632 

Scenes from Calderon's Magico 

Prodigioso (1822) .... 632 
Scenes from Goethe's Faust 

(1822) 643 

Juvenilia — 

Verses on a Cat 652 

Fragment: Omens (1807) . . 652 
Epitaphium ( 1808) .... 652 
In Horologium (1809) . . . 652 
Song from the Wandering Jew 

(1809) 653 

Fragment from the Wandering 

Jew (1809) 653 

A Dialogue: " For my dagger is 

bathed in the blood of the 

brave " (1809) 653 

To the Moonbeam (1809) . . 654 
The Solitary (1810) . . . . 654 



VUl 



CONTENTS. 



Juvenilia — 

To Death: "Death! where is 

thy victory " (1810) . . . 654 
Love's Rose (1810) .... 655 
Eyes: A Fragment (1810) . . 655 
Poems from St. Irvyne, or the 

Rosicrucian (published iSio) 656 
Posthumous Fragments of Mar- 
garet Nicholson ( 1 810) . 660 

Fragment: '"Tis midnight now 
— athwart the murky air " 662 

Despair 663 

Fragment : *' Yes ! all is past — 
swift time has fled away" . 664 

The Spectral Horseman . . 665 

Melody to a Scene of Former 

Times 666 

Stanza from a Translation of the 

Marseillaise Hymn .... 666 
Bigotry's Victim (1810? 1811) . 667 
On an Icicle that clung to the 

Grassof aGrave (1809? 1811) 667 

Love(i8ii) 668 

On a Fete at Carlton House: 

Fragment (1811) . . . . 668 

ToaStar(i8ii) 668 

To Mary, who died in this Opin- 
ion (1811) 669 

A Tale of Society as it is : From 

Facts, 1811 669 

To the Republicans of North 

America (1812) 671 

To Ireland (1812) .... 671 
To Harriet: A Fragment (181 2) 671 



Juvenilia — 

The Devil's Walk: A Ballad 

(1812) 67^ 

To the Queen of my Heart . . 674 

Appendix — 

Ugolino (1821) 675 

From Calderon's Cisma d'lngla- 

terra (1821) 676 

Additional Stanza to Ireland . 676 

Evening — To Harriet . . . 676 

To lanthe 676 

The Pine Forest of the Cascine 

near Pisa 677 

Fragments 677 

On Robert Emmet's Grave . . 678 

The Retrospect: Gym Elan . 678 
Fragment of a Sonnet — To 

Harriet 680 

To Harriet 680 

Sonnet — To a Balloon Laden 

with Knowledge .... 681 
Sonnet — On Launching some 

Bottles Filled with Knowledge 

into the Bristol Channel . . 681 
Fragment of a Sonnet : Farewell 

to North Devon 681 

On Leaving London for Wales . 681 

Notes 683 

List of Shelley's Principal 

Writings 692 

Order of Poems 695 

Index to the Poems .... 697 

Index of First Lines .... 701 



INTRODUCTION. 



Although Shelley wrote narrative poems and one great tragedy, his genius 
was primarily lyrical, and his poetry tells more to a reader who is acquainted 
with his character and the events of his life than to one who knows the poems 
only as if they had fallen out of the air from some invisible singer. No poet ever 
sang more directly out of his own feelings — his joys, his sorrows, his desires, his 
regrets ; and what he has written acquires a fuller meaning when we understand its 
source and its occasion. Shelley's poetry belongs also to a particular epoch in the 
world's history — the revolutionary epoch — and what may fairly be described as 
the body of doctrine which forms the intellectual background of his imaginative 
visions can be comprehended only when we consider his work in relation to the 
period of which it is the outcome. " A beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in 
the void his luminous wings in vain " — so Matthew Arnold, with a variation of 
Joubert's sentence on Plato, ^ defined his conception of Shelley. The charm of 
the phrase must not render us insensible of its remoteness from the fact. Shelley 
was no angel, whether of celestial or diabolic race, but most human in his passions, 
his errors, his failures, his achievement. Nor was it in the void that he lived and 
moved; he belonged in an eminent degree to the revolutionary movement of his 
own day, and viewed apart from the teaching of that geometer of the Revolution 
whom he accepted as his master — William Godwin — the work of Shelley is only 
half intelligible. 

Percy Bysshe Shelley was born on 4th August 1792, at Field Place, near Hors- 
ham, Sussex. The family was ancient and honorable, but no ancestor of the poet 
had ever given proof of literary genius. His grandfather, Bysshe Shelley, who 
received a baronetcy in 1806, had accumulated a large fortune, had married two 
heiresses, had quarrelled with his children, and now, troubled with gout and the 
infirmities of age, lived somewhat penuriously in a cottage-house at Horsham. 
Timothy Shelley, the poet's father, was a country gentleman — dull, consequen- 
tial, irritable, but not unkindly in disposition, who in the House of Commons gave 
an unwavering vote for the Whig party, and who was secured from all risk of aber- 
ration from the social conventions by a happy inaccessibility to ideas. His wife, 
Elizabeth, daughter of Charles Pilfold of EfBngham, Surrey, was beautiful in 
person, and a woman of good sense, when her good sense was not obscured by 
temper. Though no lover of literature, she was an excellent letter-writer. 

Percy, the eldest child, inherited his mother's beauty. He was slight of figure, 
of fair and ruddy complexion, with luminous blue eyes, and hair curling naturally, 

1 " Plato loses himself in the void, but one sees the play of his wings, one hears their rustle," 
quoted by Matthew Arnold in his essay on Joubert. 



INTR OD UC TION. 



which changed from golden to a rich brown ; in temperament gentle yet excitable, 
of rare sensibility, prone to yield up his imagination to fantastic tale or vision, but 
not devoid of a certain quaint mirthfulness which took delight in oddity and sur- 
prises. Having acquired some knowledge of Latin from a neighboring country 
parson, he was sent at ten years old to Sion House Academy, Isleworth, where 
Dr. Greenlaw taught some fifty or sixty boys, chiefly of the social middle class, 
and where Shelley's cousin, Thomas Medwin, was a pupil. The rough tyranny of 
the elder lads, who looked on the new scholar as strange and unsocial because 
he was sensitive and shy, sometimes drove him to violent outbreaks of passion; 
yet, says his schoolfellow Rennie, " if treated with kindness, he was very amiable, 
noble, high-spirited, and generous." Here Shelley made some progress in classical 
learning ; his sense of intellectual wonder was much stimulated by scientific lec- 
tures ; and his heart awoke to the new and exquisite pleasure of romantic attach- 
ment to a boy of about his own age, whom he describes as of a character eminently 
generous, brave, and gentle. 

In 1804 he passed from Sion House Academy to Eton, at that date under the 
headmastership of Dr. Goodall, an excellent scholar and kindly gentleman, but 
one who held the reins of authority perhaps somewhat too loosely. Shelley's 
tutor, George Bethell, with whom he boarded, was unluckily the dullest man in 
Eton ; he had the merit, however, of being good-humored and well-meaning. At 
Eton as at Sion House Shelley stood apart from the throng of his schoolfellows. 
His spirit rose in rebellion against the system of fagging ; he did not join in the 
school sports ; he pursued studies in which his young coevals did not care to follow 
him. All things seemed to point out ' ' mad Shelley " as a fit and proper victim upon 
whom the other boys might let loose their animal spirits. " I have seen him," 
wrote a schoolfellow, "surrounded, hooted, baited like a maddened bull." If it 
was his tormentors' wish to excite their victim to paroxysms of rage, they often 
attained the desired end. Yet here, as at his earlier school, he won the goodwill 
of a few of his schoolfellows, who describe him as generous and open-hearted, of 
remarkable tenderness of heart, possessed of much moral courage, and fearing 
nothing but what was false or low. No friend pleased him better than old Dr. 
Lind of Windsor, a man original in character and opinions, and of most amiable 
temper. Shelley has given idealized portraits of this friend of his boyhood in 
Zonoras of " Prince Athanase " and the aged hermit of "The Revolt of Islam." 

Shelley's interest in what we may term the romantic side of modern science 
increased during the Eton years. He read the classics with a delight in the beauty 
of the poetry and a keen interest in the philosophical views of certain writers, — 
among these Lucretius and Pliny, — but without showing much capacity for minute 
exactness of scholarship. The chief masters of his intellect were those eighteenth- 
century thinkers who seem to bring into a certain harmony the destructive or scep- 
tical criticism of the age and those boundless hopes for the future which sprung 
phantomlike from the ruins of the past. He was too young to have learned the 
lessons of experience derived from the facts of the French Revolution, as they 
developed themselves from day to day. He accepted the doctrine of the Aufkld^'ung 
from Godwin's "Political Justice " with awed and delighted mind. With Con- 
dorcet he beheld as in a vision the endless progress of the human race. His dreams 
were bright and generous dreams of youth, and in truth they were not altogether 
of a baseless fabric. Much that has become actual in the nineteenth century has 
grown out of the visions and aspirations of the age of revolution ; much perhaps 
remains to be realized. 

Two moments of boyhood memorable in the development of his spirit have 
found record in Shelley's verse — that in which, escaping from the feelings of 
resentment and revenge excited by the persecutions and tyrannies of school, he 



INTRO D UC TION. 



vowed, for his own part, to be just, gentle, wise, and free ; and that other moment 
when his imagination, escaping from the excitements of gross, fantastic horror, 
devoted its powers to the pursuit of spiritual beauty. The record of one of these 
moments will be found in the dedication of "The Revolt of Islam ; " the record 
of the other in the " Hymn to Intellectual Beauty." Both of these inspirations of 
high resolve came in the springtime, when the awakened life of nature seemed to 
reinforce the vitality of the spirit. 

Before leaving Eton Shelley was an author. The romance of " Zastrozzi," pub- 
lished in April i8io, was written, at least in great part, a year earlier. This and 
a second romance, "St. Irvyne, or the Rosicrucian," which appeared before the 
close of the same year, are indescribably but not unaccountably absurd in their 
crude efforts at subHmity, their over-wrought horrors, their pseudo-passion, their 
sentimental inanities. The author, still a boy, was yielding an untrained imagina- 
tion to the romantic movement of his day, as represented by its worst models, 
just as he had yielded his intellect in bondage, which fancied itself liberty, to the 
revolutionary speculators and dreamers. Shelley's boyish romances cease to be 
inexplicably bad when we have made acquaintance with certain Minerva Press 
novels of the same date; we see that he was only a disciple, not a creator, of the 
fantastic-absurd, to which Mrs. Radcliffe and M. G. Lewis had given a vogue, and 
which just at this date was satirized in " Northanger Abbey," the earhest novel of our 
most exquisite humorist of domestic life. A poem in several cantos on the subject 
of "The Wandering Jew " was written (i8io) by Medwin and Shelley in con- 
junction; four cantos appeared after Shelley's death, but it is uncertain whether 
they contain more than a few lines from his hand. A thin volume of verse enti- 
tled, "Original Poetry by Victor and Cazire," the work of Shelley and another, 
actually saw the light in September 1810; it was speedily withdrawn from circu- 
lation by the publisher on discovering the fact that one of the pieces was a 
transcript from the pages of M. G. Lewis. No copy of the "Original Poetry" 
is known to exist, and we can hardly regret the disappearance of verses which a 
reviewer describes, in all probability not unjustly, as "downright scribble." 

It has been suggested that Shelley's coadjutor who assumed the feminine name 
" Cazire " was his cousin Harriet Grove, a beautiful girl of his own age, whom he 
loved with a boy's first ardor, and whom he would fain have made a partner in his 
own social, political, and religious beliefs and disbeliefs. The tone of his corre- 
spondence alarmed Harriet's family, and before long they had another settlement 
for her in view. Shelley suffered, or imagined that he suffered, much, declaimed 
against bigotry, and was resolved henceforth to wage bitter war against that de- 
stroyer of human happiness. 

Having matriculated at University College, Oxford, in April 18 10, Shelley en- 
tered on residence in Michaelmas term of the same year. In his fellow-student, 
Thomas Jefferson Hogg, son of a north-country gentleman of Tory politics, he 
found his closest ally. Hogg had high intellectual powers and a genuine love of 
literature ; his type of mind and character was as remote from Shelley's as can well 
be conceived; he was keen-sighted, shrewd, sarcastic, but not devoid of some of the 
generosity of youth; and he was highly interested in observing such a singular and 
charming phenomenon among young Oxonians of the d^ys of the Regency as the 
idealist Shelley, Every one who knows anything of Shelley's life knows Hogg's 
admirable portrayal of Shelley at Oxford; every one has been an intimate with 
Hogg in the college chambers, wildly confused with electrical and chemical appa- 
ratus ; has heard the eager discourse of the young enthusiast concerning the mys- 
teries of nature and the deeper mysteries of mind ; has seen him at his favorite 
sports of skimming stones and sailing paper-boats on river or pond; has strode 
across country with the pair in their joyous winter walks, and shared the frugal sup- 



INTRODUCTION. 



per which they enjoyed on their return ; has witnessed " the divine poet's " sweet 
humanity towards those who needed the sustenance of hand or heart, and no 
less his sudden outbreaks of indignation against the wrongdoer and the oppressor; 
has smiled with the narrator at the quaint freaks and fancies of the immortal 
child. 

"The devotion, the reverence, the religion with which he was kindled towards 
all the masters of intellect," says Hogg, "cannot be described." The biographer 
speaks of the purity and " sanctity " of Shelley's life, of his " meek seriousness " 
of heart, and " marvellous gentleness " of disposition. But with reverence for the 
self-elected masters of his intellect, and this marvellous gentleness Shelley united a 
contempt for inheritance and tradition, and an intellectual audacity which was 
unchecked by any adequate sense of the difficulties encompassing the great prob- 
lems of human thought. His guides were the lights of the eighteenth-century 
illumination. Had he mastered Kant as well as Holbach, and submitted his 
intellect to Burke as he submitted it to Godwin, he might not have shot up as 
quickly, but his roots would have plunged deeper and embraced the soil more 
firmly. Yet it is hard to conceive Shelley as other than he actually was. And it 
may be that the logical gymnastic of his studies in eighteenth-century thinkers — 
and those especially of France — saved him in some degree from the dangers of 
an excessive tendency towards the visionary. " Had it not been for this sharp 
brushing away of intellectual cobwebs," writes Mr. Salt, "his genius, always 
prone to mysticism and metaphysical subtleties, might have lost itself ... in a 
labyrinth of dreams and fantasies, and thus have wasted its store of moral enthu- 
siasm." Only we must remember that in the eighteenth-century crusade against 
thrones and churches there was a good deal of visionary destructiveness, as events 
have proved, and that a part of Shelley's moral enthusiasm, as some of us venture 
to think, was not wisely directed. 

She-lley's career at University College was brief. In February i8ll a small 
pamphlet entitled "The Necessity of Atheism " was issued from a provincial press at 
"Worthing in Sussex. The author's name was not given, but in Oxford, where the 
pamphlet was offered for sale, it was known to be the work of Shelley. On being 
interrogated by the master of his college Shelley refused to answer the questions 
put to him. The same questions were put to Hogg, who had come forward to 
remonstrate with the authorities; he also declined to reply, and on 25th March 
both youths were expelled from University College for contumacy in refusing to 
answer questions and declining to disavow the publication. 

"I once was an enthusiastic Deist," Shelley wrote a few weeks later, "but 
never a Christian." His atheism was the denial of a creator rather than the denial 
of a living spirit of the universe. A Christian he never became in the theological 
sense of that word; but certainly, at a later time, he deeply reverenced the per- 
sonal character of Jesus. And his militant ardor against the historical develop- 
ments of Christianity in some degree waned as he became better acquainted with 
the literature and art of mediaeval Italy. His faith in later years had in it 
something of Plato's and of Berkeley's idealism; something perhaps also of the 
philosophic system of Spinoza. 

A word must be said of the " Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson," 
which appeared in Shelley's first term at University College. Poems written with 
a serious intention, but bearing all the marks of immaturity, were put forth under 
cover of a jest, and were perhaps retouched — Hogg assisting — with a view 
to burlesque effect. Margaret Nicholson, a mad washerwoman, had attempted 
the King's life, and was now in Bedlam. It was decided that she should be the 
authoress of the verses, and that their publication should be posthumous, under 
the editorial supervision of an imaginary nephew, John Fitz- Victor. The pamphlet 



INTR on UC TION. 



was brought out in quarto form; the mystification perhaps delighted the author, 
but we do not find it difficult to credit the publisher's statement that the work was 
almost still-born. 

On quitting Oxford the two college friends resided for a while together in Lon- 
don lodgings. Mr. Timothy Shelley refused to receive his son at Field Place 
unless he would undertake to break off all communication with Hogg, and submit 
himself to appointed tutors and governors. Such conditions Shelley declined to 
accept, and so remained in exile from his home with a sore feeling that he was 
unjustly punished for intellectual beliefs for which he was not morally responsible. 
On Hogg's departure to his friends, Shelley remained in lodgings alone. His 
younger sisters were schoolgirls at Clapham, and through them he had already 
made the acquaintance of their companion, Harriet Weslbrook, a pink-and-white 
schoolgirl beauty of sixteen, with a pleasant temper, a bright smile, and a pretty 
manner, — the daughter of a retired London coffee-house keeper. Her guide 
and guardian, the elder Miss Westbrook, already thirty y^ars old, showed a 
most affectionate interest in the young misbeliever, who was also a prospective 
baronet with a great property entailed, wrote to him, called on him with Harriet, 
conducted him to church, read under his guidance the works of heretics. When 
in the summer Shelley visited his cousin Mr. Grove at Cwm Elan in Radnor- 
shire, the Westbrooks were also in Wales, and communications went to and fro 
between Shelley and the sisters. On the return of the Westbrooks to London 
urgent letters came from Harriet; she was persecuted in her home; they were 
about to force her to return to school where she was miserable; should she 
resist her father, or would it be wrong to put an end to her life? Another letter 
came in which she threw herself on Shelley's protection; she would fly with him 
if he were but willing. Shelley hastened to London, yet before he left Wales he 
found time to write to his cousin Charles telling him that if he devoted himself 
to Harriet it was not for love's sake but through a chivalrous motive of self- 
sacrifice. On seeing Harriet, he was shocked by her altered looks, which he 
ascribed to the suffering caused by domestic persecution; she now avowed that 
it was not so, that she loved him and feared that he could not return her love. 
They parted with a promise on Shelley's part that if she summoned him from the 
country he would come quickly and unite his fate with hers. Within a week 
the summons arrived. Immediately arrangements for flight by the northern mail- 
coach were made, and on the 28th of August 181 1 Shelley and Harriet West- 
brook, aged respectively nineteen and sixteen, joined hands as man and wife at 
Edinburgh, with such ceremony as the Scottish law required. It needed some 
straining of the principles of a disciple of William Godwin to submit to a legal 
form of marriage; but for the sake of Harriet's appearance in the eyes of the 
world he consented to what he regarded as an evil. He assured her that for his 
own part he did not consider the contract binding, if at some future time their 
union should prove a source of misery instead of happiness. ^ And in so far he 
was obedient to the teaching of his philosophic master. 

In fact, at this time, Shelley was immeasurably more interested in a Sussex 
schoolmistress. Miss Hitchener, whom he had idealized into an Egeria or a Cythna, 
than in Harriet Westbrook. This very commonplace person became for his boyish 
imagination a type of all that is most exalted in womanhood, but his feeling was 
one of homage and rapture, not a feeling of love, which could descend to the 
commonplace of wedlock. " Blame me if thou wilt, dearest friend," he wrote to 
her, when apologizing for his marriage, "for still thou art dearest to me; yet pity 
even this error if thou blamest me." A closer acquaintance with Miss Hitchener, 

^ See Southey's last letter to Shelley in " Southey's Correspondence with Caroline Bowles." 



INTRO D UCTION. 



a year later, resulted — after a fashion too common with Shelley — in an idealiza- 
tion of an opposite kind; the worthy woman assumed the form of a demon of 
selfishness and ignoble passion, an angel indeed still, but of the diabolic kind. 

Shelley's father had allowed him two hundred pounds a year before his mar- 
riage; now he saw fit to give the rash boy a lesson by cutting off supplies. Ulti- 
mately the allowance was again given, and with tv/o hundred pounds also from 
Mr, Westbrook, the young couple were not in danger of want. 

From Edinburgh they journeyed to York, where they passed under the control 
of the evil providence of their wedded life, the elder sister, Eliza Westbrook; and 
where misconduct of Hogg's caused a temporary breach between him and Shelley. 
From York they passed to Keswick, attracted in part by the fact that there resided 
Southey, for whose poetry Shelley at the time had a strong admiration. Southey 
received the young people with characteristic kindness, but to Shelley he seemed 
a spent force, a withered branch, because he took little interest in metaphysical 
subtleties, and had lost his early confidence in the virtue of Revolutionary abstrac- 
tions. A more congenial personal influence was that of William Godwin, with 
whom Shelley entered into correspondence while at Keswick; he laid bare his 
spirit before Godwin as before a philosophic confessor, listened to his direction with 
reverence, and hoped for the joy of a closer intimacy with this latest and greatest 
of the sages. 

With his desire at once to translate his ideas into action for the service of the 
world, Shelley looked abroad for a battlefield where he might combat on behalf 
of freedom, and he found it, as he supposed, in Ireland. He prepared an 
Address to the Irish people, consisting, as he states it, "of the benevolent and 
tolerant deductions of philosophy reduced into the simplest language." He would 
plead on behalf of Catholic Emancipation, on behalf of the Repeal of the Union; 
he would endeavor to establish a system of societies in Ireland for the discussion 
of social, political, and moral questions; he would inculcate principles of virtue 
and benevolence. With such views he visited Dublin, scattered abroad a couple of 
pamphlets, spoke at a public meeting where O'Connell had harangued, dined with 
Curran and felt no liking for his host, discovered that the state of Irish politics and 
parties was not quite as simple as he had supposed, and, yielding to Godwin's 
advice and his own sense of failure, quitted Ireland, having effected little for the 
cause in which he was interested. 

From Dublin Shelley, with Harriet and the inevitable Eliza Westbrook, crossed 
to Wales, and after a short residence amid wood and stream and mountain at 
Nantgwillt, proceeded to the coast of North Devon, and took up his abode (June 
1812) in a cottage at Lynmouth, then a secluded fishing-village. The July and 
August days were among the happiest of Shelley's life; his regard for his young 
wife had deepened into sincere love; he was in communication with the immortal 
Godwin; his lady of light. Miss Hitchener, visited the cottage, and was not yet 
discovered to be an intolerable affliction; his mind was vigorously occupied with a 
prose pleading on behalf of liberty of speech — the "Letter to Lord Ellenbor- 
ough," — and with certain ambitious enterprises in verse. Of these last some 
still remain in manuscript; but the most important, "Queen Mab," sufficiently 
exposes its author's spirit at this period, his convictions, his hopes, his dreams, his 
views of the past, his aspirations towards the future. "It is," I have said else- 
where, " a kind of synthesis which harmonizes the political and social fervors of 
the Irish expedition, with all their wisdom and folly, and the imaginative exaltation 
to which the grandeur and loyeliness of Welsh hillsides and Devon cliffs and 
waves had given rise." It is a pamphlet in verse, but with some of the beauty of 
poetry underlying its declamatory prophesyings. Its pictorial effects are some- 
times rather spectacular than in a high sense imaginative. Its thought is oftei? 



IN TROD UC TION. 



crude. It suffers from a moral shallowness, derived in part from Godwin, and 
arising from the supposition that evil exists less in human character than in human 
institutions. Its survey of the past history of society is superficial and one-sided ; 
its hopes for the future are in great part fantastic. Yet the poem, which may 
be held to lie midway between Shelley's " Juvenilia " and the works of his 
adult years, has value in its deep sympathy with humanity and its imaginative 
setting forth of the idea of a cosmos, the unity of nature, the universality of 
law, the vast and ceaseless flow of Being ever subject to a process of evolution 
and development. In certain passages the writer ceases to be a doctrinaire 
rhetorician, and rises into a poet who can interpret alike the facts of external 
nature and the longings of the human heart. " Villainous trash," was Shelley's 
own description of "Queen Mab," when a pirated edition appeared in 1821; 
but time, the arbiter, has pronounced that it forms in fact an integral part of 
his gift to our literature. "Queen Mab" was finished in February 1813, and 
was printed in that year for private distribution. 

Shelley's residence at Lynmouth came to an untimely end. He had amused 
himself — yet with a grave face — by launching into the Bristol Channel boxes and 
bottles, each laden with a copy of his broadsheet " Declaration of Rights," or his 
poem "The Devil's Walk," for the waves and winds to put into circulation. On 
19th August his Irish servant was watched as he posted up about Barnstaple copies 
of the " Declaration," a statement on the subject of government and society drawn 
up on the model of French Revolutionary documents. The Irishman was arrested, 
convicted, and sentenced to six months' imprisonment. His master, having done 
what he could to lighten Dan's sufferings in prison, hastily left the Lynmouth cot- 
tage, and took refuge in the little town of Tremadoc in the county of Carnarvon. 
Here for a time Shelley was much interested in the fortunes of the great embank- 
ment, designed to rescue a tract of land from, the sea. He attempted to collect 
funds to carry on the undertaking, contributed himself out of all proportion to his 
means, and visited London in order to solicit further subscriptions. In London 
(October 181 2) he saw Godwin face to face for the first time, and the impression 
on each side was favorable. He renewed his friendship with Hogg; finally broke 
with his once worshipped, now detested. Miss Hitchener; and added to the circle 
of his acquaintances the agreeable family of Mr. Newton, whose zeal on behalf of 
vegetarianism commended him to Shelley. During the winter in Wales he exerted 
himself generously on behalf of the suffering poor; he studied the philosophers of 
the French illumination, and, under Godwin's advice, endeavored to gain some real 
acquaintance with history, added to his store of manuscript poems, and prepared 
for publication a series of extracts from the Bible which were selected with a view 
to set forth a pure morality unencumbered by what Shelley held to be biblical my- 
thology. On the night of 26th February 1813 the lonely house of Tanyrallt, which 
the Shelleys occupied, was entered by some villain bent on outrage. Alarmed by 
the noise, Shelley descended, pistols in hand, from his bedroom. Shots were fired 
and an encounter took place, which ended in the escape of the marauder. At- 
tempts have been made to discredit the story of this adventure. There do not 
appear to be sufficient grounds for disbelief, but we may perhaps accept the theory 
that Shelley's overwrought nerves played tricks upon him after the attack, and that 
the alleged later attempt at assassination on the same night was a delusion of the 
brain. 

On a second visit to Ireland Shelley travelled as far south as Killarney and 
Cork. In April he was again in London, where in June 1813 his first child, a girl, 
named lanthe, was born. " He was extremely fond of his child," says Peacock, 
"and would walk up and down a room with it in his arms for a long time together, 
singing to it a monotonous melody of his own making." When Harriet had recov- 



8 INTR OD UC TION: 



ered, she and her husband moved to Bracknell in Berkshire, attracted thither by the 
presence of Mrs. Boinville (sister-in-law of the vegetarian Newton) and her young 
married daughter Cornelia Turner. These new friends were cultivated, refined, 
enthusiastic, perhaps somewhat sentimental. With Cornelia as his fellow-student 
Shelley made progress in Ariosto, Tasso, Petrarch. It would have been a time of 
great enjoyment but that pecuniary troubles disturbed him; debts had accumulated, 
and he was forced to raise money at ruinous interest by post-obit bonds. In Octo- 
ber he left Bracknell, wandered northwards to the English lakes, and thence pro- 
ceeded to Edinburgh. But his stay in Scotland was not for long. Before the close 
of the year he was settled in a furnished house at Windsor, in the midst of his 
schoolboy haunts and at no great distance from Bracknell, where the Boinvilles 
still resided. For a time he occupied himself in writing the dialogue published in 
1814 with the title " A Refutation of Deism," in which it is his aim to demonstrate 
that no via media can be found between Christianity and Atheism. 

In order to raise money it was necessary to place beyond all doubt the legiti- 
macy of any son and heir who might be born to Shelley; doubts were probably 
raised as to the validity of the Scotch wedding; and accordingly on 24th March 
1 8 14 Shelley went through the ceremony of m.arriage with Harriet according to the 
rites of the Church of England. But before this event his domestic happiness had 
been grievously clouded. Whatever intellectual and spiritual sympathy at any time 
existed between him and his young wife had now ceased to exist. She aspired to a 
more fashionable life than he could endure; her expenditure on dress, silver-plate, 
and a carriage plunged him deeper in debt, when debt had become a misery and 
a degradation. Eliza Westbrook had grown an intolerable presence in the house- 
hold, and yet Eliza Westbrook was forever at hand. Shelley was urgent that 
Harriet should nurse her child, and Harriet insisted on hiring a wet-nurse. At 
length the managing elder sister withdrew, but Harriet maintained after her depart- 
ure a hard and cold bearing as of one who had suffered wrong. Shelley sought 
for some imperfect consolation in the friendship of Mrs. Boinville and Mrs. Turner. 
In May he implored for a reconciliation, but without effect. Harriet quitted her 
home and went to reside in Bath, while her husband took refuge in London. 

With characteristic generosity he was at this time endeavoring to succor Godwin 
who had pressing need of a large sum of money. In May or June Shelley first looked 
with interest on Mary, the daughter of Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft. She had 
just returned from a visit to Scotland — a girl in her seventeenth year, with golden 
hair, a pale, pure face, great forehead, and earnest eyes of hazel. She was vigor- 
ous of intellect, possessed of much mental courage, and much firmness of will, 
united with sensibility and ardor of heart. The second Mrs. Godwin had made 
Mary's home unhappy. She and Shelley drew towards each other in what at first 
seemed to be friendship, but quickly proved itself love. At the same time — if we 
may trust a statement of Mrs. Godwin's daughter, Claire Clairmont^ — Shelley had 
not only come to believe that Harriet had ceased to love him; he declared his 
belief that she had proved faithless to him, and had formed a connection with an 
Irish officer named Ryan. There is no proof that Shelley had evidence sufficient 
to support this charge, and Harriet herself asserted her fidelity. Her assertion is 
supported by Thornton Hunt, Hookham, Hogg, and others. But Godwin stated 
in 18 1 7 that he knew from unquestionable authority, wholly unconnected with 
Shelley, that Harriet had proved unfaithful to her husband before their separation. 
We can readily suppose that Shelley might persuade himself of what was not the 
fact. He wrote to Harriet begging her to come to London. On her arrival 
(14th July) he told her that he could no longer regard her as his wife; that his 
heart was given to Mary Godwin; but that he would continue, as far as might be, to 
watch over her interests. The shock and agitation of Shelley's disclosure brought 



INTK on UC TION. 



an illness on Harriet, during which Eliza Westbrook was in constant attendance, and 
Shelley besought the sufferer to return to life and health. But his resolution to 
part from her remained unchanged. Having made arrangements for Harriet's 
material comfort, he prepared, without the knowledge of Godwin or his wife, for 
flight with Mary. On the morning of 28th July 18 14 the fugitives were on their 
way to France. They had persuaded Claire Clairmont, the daughter of Godwin's 
wife by a previous marriage, to be their companion. An idealized record of 
Shelley's days of misery with Harriet is probably to be found in the confessions 
of the madhouse-prisoner of " Julian and Maddalo." A less obscure narrative of 
the causes of estrangement is given with altered names in Mrs. Shelley's novel of 
" Lodore." 

Crossing from Dover to Calais in an open boat, the runaways made for Paris, 
and having there procured money, they travelled, Shelley on foot, Mary or Claire on 
muleback, towards Switzerland. From Troyes Shelley wrote to Harriet a letter 
which would be incomprehensible if coming from any other writer, in which he 
expressed a hope that she would follow them, and reside under his care in their 
immediate neighborhood. On reaching Brunnen on the Lake of Lucerne, the 
wanderers engaged rooms, but apprehending a difficulty of obtaining supplies at so 
great a distance from England, they hastily turned homewards, descended the Rhine 
as far as Cologne, and after an absence of six weeks reached London in the middle 
of September. 

The months in London between mid-September and January 18 15 were months 
of trial and vexation, Godwin was estranged; the intercourse with Harriet, who 
in November gave birth to Shelley's second child, a son, was of a troubled kind; 
there were sore straits for money, and during some days Shelley, while hiding from 
creditors, was parted from Mary. But the opening month of 181 5 altered his cir- 
cumstances. On 6th January his grandfather died, and Shelley became the imme- 
diate heir to a great property. By parting with his interest in a portion of the 
estates to his father, he secured an annual income of one thousand pounds, and 
also received a considerable sum for the payment of his debts. Unhappily, at 
the same time that his worldly goods increased, his health in some degree failed. 
In the summer he wandered through Devon, and early in August found a happy 
resting-place at Bishopsgate on the borders of Windsor Park. Accompanied by 
Mary and his friend Peacock, he spent some delightful days in a river excursion 
up the Thames as far as Lechlade, of which we have a memorial in one of the 
early lyrical pieces. On his return home he composed in the glades of Windsor 
Great Park the poem which first proves that his genius had attained to adult years, 
his " Alastor." It is, in its inmost sense, a pleading on behalf of huiYian love — 
that love which he had himself sought and found; it is a rebuke to the man of 
genius — the seeker for beauty and the seeker for truth — who would live apart 
from human sympathy; yet the fate of the solitary idealist, Shelley tells us, is less 
mournful than that of one who should -fatten in apathy, " instigated by no sacred 
thirst of doubtful knowledge, duped by no illustrious superstition." The poem is 
a record, marvellously exalted, of his experiences of the past year, — his thoughts 
of love and death, and the impressions derived from external nature amid Swiss 
lake and mountain, on the arrowy Reuss, among the rock-guarded passes of the 
Rhine, and in presence of the autumnal glories of Windsor Forest. 

In January 1816 Mary gave birth to a boy, named William after her father. 
Still Godwin maintained his attitude of alienation from Shelley, though he deigned 
to accept liberal gifts of money. At length Shelley grew indignant, yet was not 
the less zealous in rendering Godwin what aid he could. It seemed that Mary and 
he would be happier in any other country than in England, where kinsfolk and 
former friends averted their faces in anger or in shame. Accordingly, it was de- 



10 INTRO D UC TION. 



^ 



cided that trial should be made of a residence abroad; there would be a compensa 
tion in the diminished cost of living for the loss of English fields and skies. In 
the early days of May i8i6 Shelley, with Mary, little WilHam, and Claire Clair- 
mont, was en route for Geneva by way of Paris. 

Of Byron's intrigue with Miss Clairmont, Shelley and Mary, when they started 
from England, were in profound ignorance. But it was with a view of meeting 
Byron that Claire had been urgent with Shelley to take her abroad. At Secheron, 
a small suburb of Geneva, the two great poets met. When Shelley moved into 
occupation of a cottage on the opposite side of the lake, and Byron took refuge 
from an importunate public at the Villa Diodati, they were in constant communica- 
tion. They rowed or sailed together, and towards the close of June, circumnavi- 
gated the lake, during which excursion " The Prisoner of Chillon " was written. 
With Mary for his companion, Shelley visited Chamouni. The feelings with which 
Swiss scenery inspired him maybe read in the poem " Mont Blanc," and the noble 
" Hymn to Intellectual Beauty." Mary also was moved to imaginative creation, and 
now conceived the design of her tale of " Frankenstein," undertaken in fulfilment 
of an agreement that each of the friends — herself, Byron, Shelley, and the young 
physician, Polidori — should produce a ghost-story. Notwithstanding the delights 
of Switzerland, the hearts of Shelley and Mary turned longingly towards England. 
Before quitting Geneva they had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of 
M. G. Lewis, the celebrated author of "The Monk," a book which Shelley, as a 
boy, had read with eager enjoyment. Early in September their feet were once 
more on English soil. 

But it seemed as if they had returned only to encounter calamity. On 9th 
October Mary's half-sister, Fanny, the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft, who had 
been for some time past in depressed spirits, put an end to her life by poison in an 
inn in Swansea. Alarmed by a desponding letter Shelley had hastened from Bath, 
where he was residing, to meet her, but arrived too late. The shock of excite- 
ment and grief was for a time disastrous to his health, and it was well for him that 
at this moment he found a friend of bright and courageous temper in Leigh Hunt. 
Disaster, however, followed on disaster. In November Shelley was seeking to 
discover Harriet, who had disappeared from his ken and from the protection of her 
father. On loth December her body was found in the Serpentine river. At first 
after the parting with Shelley she had hoped that he would return to her; when this 
hope faded away her unhappiness was great, she complained of the restraint to 
which she was subjected in her father's house, and already spoke of suicide. For 
some time before her death she had broken away from that restraint. Her daughter 
aged three, *and her little boy of two years old, had been placed with a clergyman 
in Warwick. She herself lived openly for a time, Godwin tells a correspondent, 
with a certain colonel whom he names. Then she seems to have sunk lower, and 
to have been deserted. In informing Shelley of the terrible event, the bookseller, 
Hookham, mentioned that had she lived a little longer she would have given birth 
to a child. 1 The evidence at the coroner's inquest confirms the statement. Shelley 
was deeply moved, but not as though he were the author of the calamity. *' I 
take God to witness, if such a Being is now regarding both you and me," he after- 
wards wrote to Southey, "and I pledge myself, if we meet, as perhaps you expect, 
before Him after death, to repeat the same in His presence — that you accuse me 
wrongfully. I am innocent of ill, either done or intended." It was now possible 

1 When I wrote my " Life of Shelley," I did not think it necessary to state some of the facts men- 
tioned above, with the result that some critics, who did not take the trouble to examine the Times 
newspaper to which I referred, charged me with making false accusations against Harriet Shelley, 
whose faults I desired not to deny but to veil. Since then Mrs. Marshall has set forth the facts in 
her " Life and Letters of Alary Wollstonecraft Shelley," and I have now no motive for reserve. 



IN TROD UC TION. 1 1 



for him to give Mary her right name of wife, and he lost no time in celebrating his 
marriage (30th December 1816). He claimed his children from the Westbrooks, 
but the claim was resisted. After tedious proceedings in Chancery, judgment was 
given by Lord Eldon to the effect that inasmuch as Shelley's professed opinions led 
to conduct which the law pronounced immoral, the children could not be placed in 
his immediate care; but since he had named suitable persons to educate them — a 
Dr. and Mrs. Hume — they should be intrusted to these custodians during their 
minority, and their father should be permitted at certain times to see them. The 
Chancellor's decision was not designed to be harsher than seemed necessary; but 
the loss of his children was a greater blow to Shelley than the death of their 
mother, and for a time he even feared that little William might also be taken from 
him. 

While the Chancery affair was proceeding, Shelley resided at Great Marlow, 
on the Thames. Occasionally in London he visited Hunt, at whose house he met 
Keats and Hazlitt. He was now on amicable terms with Godwin, and gained a 
new and valuable friend in Horace Smith. At Marlow, notwithstanding the 
Chancery troubles, he had many happy days; he read much in classical and modern 
literature; designed and wrote some portions of " Prince Athanase " and of " Rosa- 
lind and Helen;" and while alone in his boat on the Thames or among the Bisham 
woods, he made steady progress with his ambitious epic of revolution and counter- 
revolution, " Laon and Cythna." " He saw, or thought he saw " — I quote words 
of my own previously written — "as the great fact of the age a vast movement 
towards the reconstruction of society, in which the French Revolution had been a 
startling incident — an incident fruitful of much evil and much good. It was his 
desire to rekindle in men the aspiration towards a happier condition of moral and 
political society, and at the same time to warn men of the dangers which arise in 
a movement of revolution from their own egoisms and greeds and baser passions; it 
was his desire to present the true ideal of revolution — a national movement based 
on moral principle, inspired by justice and charity, unstained by blood, unclouded 
by turbulence, and using material force only as the tranquil putting forth in act of 
spiritual powers. . . . Unhappily, with all that was admirable in the Revolution- 
ary movement of his time — its enthusiasm of humanity, its recognition of a moral 
element in politics, its sentiment of the brotherhood of man — there are united in 
Shelley's poem all its shallow sophisms. Shelley's illusions are such as could now 
deceive no thinking mind. His generous ardors, the quivering music of his verse, _ 
the quick and flamelike beauty of his imagery, still bear gifts for the spirits of 
men." 

Some few copies of " Laon and Cythna " had been issued when voices of pro- 
test alarmed Oilier the publisher. He insisted that certain alterations should be 
made. Violent attacks on theism and the Christian faith, as he held, were ill- 
judged and out of place; the relationship of the hero and heroine as brother and sister 
was a ground of grave and just offence. And it is true that in this last particular 
Shelley's poem gave a flagrant example of the unsoundness of the revolutionary 
way of thought, which with a solvent of abstract notions, erroneously deduced, 
proceeds to disintegrate social relations and sentiments that are among the finest 
products of the evolution of the race. By some strokes of the pen and a few 
cancel-pages "Laon and Cythna" was altered into "The Revolt of Islam." 
There was the loss of one or two admirable lines; but in yielding to the pressure 
of public feeling, acting through his publisher, Shelley removed an ethical blot 
which could not fail with many, and those not the least judicious, readers, to mar 
even the artistic effect of his poem. 

During the early months of 181 7 the effects of a bad harvest were keenly felt 
by the poor of Marlow, where lace-making was the principal industry. Shelley, 



12 INTRODUCTION. 



says Peacock, went continually among them, and to the extent of his ability relieved 
the most urgent cases of distress. He organized his relief into a system, and 
among those in need gave a preference to widows and children. The wrongs and 
sufferings of the toiling masses weighed heavily on his spirit. Yet in " A Pro- 
posal for putting Reform to the Vote," by "The Hermit of Marlow," he showed 
himself more moderate in his demands of immediate reform than many of his 
political contemporaries. This, indeed, was characteristic of Shelley. He was 
opposed to violence, and was well content with small gains as an instalment, 
though his vision of the remote future never permitted him to rest in any provis- 
ional advantage. Shelley's poetry expresses his visions as a seer of the far-off 
golden age; his prose writings express his thoughts as a practical reformer. In 
" An Address to the People on the Death of the Princess Charlotte," he laments 
the death of the young wife and mother; but he sees a more grievous calamity, 
and one worthy of deeper grief, in the condition of the people of England. 
Shelley's labors among the poor, his anxiety in connection with the Chancery affair, 
and the excitement of poetical composition, injuriously affected his health. It was 
even feared that seeds of consumption were being developed in his constitution. 
He resolved to leave Marlow, which evidently did not suit him, and make the 
experiment of a residence in Italy. Another motive tended to draw him in that 
direction — Byron was at Venice, and Shelley desired that Byron's daughter, 
Allegra, the child of Miss Clairmont, should be placed under her father's care. 
The mother, not without misgivings, consented. On I2th March Shelley looked 
for the last time on English skies and fields. Accompanied by Mary, little William, 
his infant daughter Clara (born 2d September 1817), and Miss Clairmont with her 
child, Shelley sailed to Dover, travelled south, and, having crossed Mont Cenis, 
reached Milan by the 4th of April 1818. 

Shelley had hoped to settle on the shores of Como, but a suitable residence 
could not be found. Pisa and Leghorn were successively visited. In the latter 
city resided Mr. and Mrs. Gisborne, with the son of Mrs. Gisborne by a previous 
marriage, Henry Reveley, a young engineer. Mrs. Gisborne had been an old and 
valued friend of Godwin; she was a woman of fine character — sensitive, modest, 
cultivated, with much intellectual curiosity; it was indeed a piece of good fortune 
to find such an acquaintance in a strange land. The summer was spent delightfully 
at the Baths of Lucca, under green chestnut boughs, and within hearing of the 
^Lima dashing upon its rocks. During these midsummer weeks Shelley wrote his 
translation of Plato's " Banquet " — a rendering which has much of the luminous 
beauty of the original. To please Mary he took up his unfinished " Rosalind and 
Helen," begun at Marlow, and quickly carried it to the close. This poem, partly 
suggested by circumstances in the life of Mary's friend, Isabel Booth (born Bax- 
ter), was published, together with the "Lines written among the Euganean Hills," 
the " Hymn to Intellectual Beauty," and the sonnet " Ozymandias," in the spring 
of 1819. 

Desirous to see her child Allegra, Miss Clairmont visited Venice in August, with 
Shelley as her companion of the way. It was proposed in a friendly mood by 
Byron that Shelley and his family should occupy his villa at Este, among the Euga- 
nean hills, and that Miss Clairmont should there for a time enjoy companionship 
with Allegra. The proposal was gladly accepted. Mary arrived with her children 
at Este, but little Clara was seriously ill. It was necessary to consult a physician 
at Venice; unfortunately the passport had been forgotten, but Shelley's impetu- 
osity overcame the resistance of the soldiers. The anxious parents reached Venice 
on 24th September, only to learn that there was no hope, and within an hour 
little Clara lay dead in her mother's arms. 

Shelley's impressions of Venice and of Byron at this period may be found in 



INTRODUCTION. 13 



his letters and in the admirable poem "Julian and Maddalo." The letters exhibit 
the coarser side of Byron's Venetian life. In the poem is given a portrait of 
Byron, drawn without the baser lines and darker colors. The incidents there 
recorded — the ride on the Lido, the glory of sunset, viewed from the gondola's 
covert, the visit to the dreary island of the bell and tower, the sight of Allegra in 
her bright childhood — are probably idealized from recollection of what had actually 
taken place. In the story of the maniac, Shelley interweaves memories of his own 
unhappy past. 

Greater designs, however, occupied his thoughts — a tragedy of " Tasso " (of 
which we possess some fragments), a lyrical drama on a subject derived from the 
Book of Job, and the " Prometheus Unbound." In the summer-house at Este the 
first act of " Prometheus " was almost completed by the first days of October 

1818. The fortitude of a heroic saviour of mankind, with his final victory, was a 
theme which interested Shelley's deepest feelings, and aroused the noblest powers 
of his imagination. 

A warmer climate for the winter than that of North Italy seemed desirable, and 
in November Shelley and his family journeyed to the south. The greatness of 
antique Rome, as seen in its monuments, impressed him deeply, and he began a 
tale of the Coliseum, which, however, was never finished. But he had chosen 
Naples as his place of winter residence, and thither before the close of November 
he pursued his way. No prose writings in our language are more instinct with 
radiance and beauty than Shelley's letters which tell of his visit to Pompeii, Vesu- 
vius, Psestum. Reminiscences of the day at Pompeii appear in the " Ode to 
Naples," written two years later. Yet it is certain that Shelley's spirits often 
drooped during his stay at Naples, and this melancholy mood found poetical ex- 
pression in one of the most pathetic of his lyrical pieces. In the spring of 1819 he 
returned to Rome, saw the ceremonies of Holy Week, and studied classical sculp- 
ture and Renaissance paintings. The second and third acts of " Prometheus 
Unbound " were written among the ruins of the Baths of Caracalla, then overgrown 
with flowers and blossoming shrubs. "The blue sky of Rome," he writes, " and 
the effect of the vigorous awakening of spring in that divinest climate, and the new 
life with which it drenches the spirit even to intoxication, were the inspiration of 
this drama." The fourth act — a sublime afterthought — was added in December, 

1819, at Florence. 

The days at Rome were darkened in June by the greatest sorrow of Shelley's 
later years. On the 7th of that month his beloved son William died; the father 
had watched during sixty hours of agony. In the English burial-ground, near the 
Porta San Paola, the little body was laid to rest. Mary's anguish was extreme, 
all her happiness seemed to be forever lost. In order that she might have Mrs. 
Gisborne's companionship, a little country house, the Villa Valsovano, at a short 
distance from Leghorn, was taken for three months, and here, in the glazed terrace 
at the top of the house, Shelley studied, meditated, and basked in the summer sun- 
shine. The tragedy of "The Cenci," begun at Rome, and interrupted by the 
death of his son, now advanced rapidly. The exhibition of tyrannous power, in 
the person of the Count, and of martyr energy in Beatrice, born for gentleness and 
love, was admirably suited to the genius of Shelley. While essentially real and 
human, the drama moves among ideal passions. Horror is here ennobled by 
beauty, as Shelley himself describes it in his stanzas suggested by the Medusa of 
Leonardo da Vinci. A small edition of his tragedy was struck off in quarto at 
Leghorn and was sent to England to be sold by the Olliers. 

But the work of Shelley's annus inirabilis, 1819, was not yet complete. At Flor- 
ence, whither in October he had removed from the summer residence near Leghorn, 
he made notes upon the sculptures in the galleries. At the same time he did 



14 INTRODUCTION. 



not forget England, and its social and political needs. In the unfinished " Philo- 
sophical View of Reform " he attempted to investigate the causes of the distress of 
the English people, and to suggest the proper remedies. Tidings of the so-called 
" Manchester Massacre " affected Shelley deeply, and led him to write the admi- 
rable " Mask of Anarchy," in which he exhorts his countrymen to ways of peace 
and soberness — the true ways which lead to liberty. In the fantastic satire, " Peter 
Bell the Third," Wordsworth, turned a Tory, is taken as a type of the self-betrayal 
of genius to the stultifying influences of the world; the poem is an example, not 
altogether happy, of Shelley's handling of the humorous-grotesque. The great 
"Ode to the West Wind," in which there is a union of lyrical breadth with lyrical 
intensity unsurpassed in English song, was conceived and partly written in a wood 
that skirted the Arno on a day when the autumnal gale was gathering the vapors 
and rain-clouds; but to Shelley's imagination the wild wind of autumn becomes a 
harbinger of spring. Finally, in hours when he did not feel himself capable of 
creative work, he translated into graceful English verse Euripides' drama of " The 
Cyclops." Assuredly no greater gift to English poetry was ever given by a poet 
within a twelvemonth than Shelley's gift of 1819. 

At Florence on 12th November the son who survived his father, and who was 
to comfort his mother in her sorrows, Percy Florence, was born. As winter ad- 
vanced Shelley, suffering from the severe climate, decided to migrate to Pisa, where 
the air was mild, the water singularly pure, and an eminent physician, Vacca Ber- 
linghieri, might be consulted. The greater part of his life, from January 1820 to 
the close, was spent in Pisa. The presence of Mr. Tighe and Lady Mountcashell 
(a former pupil of Mary Wollstonecraft) added to the attractions of the place. 
In the summer of 1820 a move was made to the Gisbornes' house at Leghorn, then 
unoccupied. And here was written that most delightful of poetical epistles, the 
letter to Maria Gisborne. Mary had in part recovered her spirits, and little Percy 
was " the merriest babe in the world." The mother was not wholly occupied with 
domestic cares, for she threw herself with spirit into the study of Greek, while 
Shelley occupied himself with the holiday task, so happily executed, of translating 
the Homeric " Hymn to Mercury " into ottava rinia. As the heats grew more 
trying, they took refuge at the Baths of San Giuliano, some four miles distant from 
Pisa. During an expedition to Monte San Pellegrino, the resort of pilgrims at 
certain seasons of the year, Shelley conceived the idea of the " Witch of Atlas; " 
the poem was written in the three days which immediately succeeded his return to 
the Baths. It would have pleased Mary better if he had chosen a theme less 
remote from human sympathy; she playfully reproached him, and her fault-finding 
drew forth the graceful rejoinder which may be read in the introductory stanzas. 
When a little later he dealt in a grotesque manner with events of contemporary 
history, the result was by no means so fortunate; " CEdipus Tyrannus, or Swellfoot 
the Tyrant," which dramatizes, with satirical intention, the affair of Queen Caro- 
line, is among the least happy of its author's efforts, yet it has a certain value as 
presenting a curious facet of his mind. " Swellfoot " was published in London in 
1820, but was almost immediately withdrawn from circulation by the publisher. 

In the autumn (1820) Shelley, with his wife and infant son, returned to Pisa. 
They had been relieved of the presence of Miss Clairmont, who had taken a situa- 
tion as governess at Florence; but Shelley corresponded with her, and took the 
kindest interest in all that concerned her. Friends and acquaintances gathered 
around him at Pisa — his cousin and former schoolfellow, Thomas Medwin, now a 
captain of dragoons, lately returned from India; the Irishman, Count Taaffe, 
who regarded himself as laureate of the city, and a learned critic of Italian litera- 
ture; Sgricci, the celebrated 7?nprovvJsatore ; and Prince Mavrocordato, son of the 
ex-hospodar of Wallachia, young, ardent, cultured, who was to become the fore- 



INTRO D UC TION. 1 5 



most statesman of the Greek Revolution. Through a sometime Professor of Phys- 
ics at the University of Pisa, Francesco Pacchiani, Shelley was introduced to Emilia, 
the daughter of Count Viviani, who had been confined for two years in the Convent 
of St. Anna. Mary and Shelley were both deeply interested in the beautiful Ital- 
ian girl. Her youth, her charm, her sorrows awoke in Shelley all the idealizing 
power of his imagination; she became to him, as it were, a symbol of all that is 
radiant and divine, all that is to be pursued and never attained — the absolute of 
beauty, truth, and love. While for the man she was a living and breathing 
woman, fascinating, and an object of tenderest solicitude, for the poet she rose into 
the avatar of the ideal. With such a feeling towards Emilia he wrote his " Epi- 
psychidion; " "It is," he tells Mr. Gisborne, "a mystery; as to real flesh and 
blood, you know I do not deal in these articles. ... I desired Oilier not to cir- 
culate this piece except to the mivfroi, and even they, it seems, are inclined to 
approximate me to the circle of a servant-girl and her sweetheart." As had hap- 
pened so often before, Shelley in dme time passed out of his idealizing mood. " The 
Epipsychidion," he afterwards wrote, "I cannot look at; the person whom it 
celebrates was a cloud instead of a Juno; and poor Ixion starts from the centaur 
that was the offspring of his own embrace." The same idealizing ardor which 
found poetical expression in " Epipsychidion," gave its elevated tone to Shelley's 
essay in criticism, the "Defence of Poetry," written in February and March 1821 
as a reply to Peacock's "Four Ages of Poetry." It is perhaps the most admi- 
rable of his prose writings, and serves as an undesigned exposition of the processes 
of his own mind as an imaginative creator. 

The summer of 1821 like that of the preceding year was spent at the Baths of 
San Giuliano. A friendship had sprung up in Pisa between Shelley and a young 
half-pay lieutenant of dragoons, Edward Williams, who, with his wife, had been 
attracted to Italy partly by Medwin's promise that he should be introduced to 
Shelley. The Williamses had taken a charming villa four miles from Shelley's 
residence at the Baths, and communication was easy and delightful by means of a 
boat on the canal which was fed by the waters of the Serchio. Edward Williams 
was frank, simple, kind-hearted, and not without a lively interest in literature; 
Jane had a sweet insinuating grace, and could gratify Shelley's ear with the melo- 
dies of her guitar. The days passed happily, and might have passed without a 
memorable incident save for an event not immediately connected with the dwellers 
at the Baths. In February 1821 occurred the death of Keats at Rome; but tidings 
did not reach Shelley until April. He had known Keats, but had never felt a deep 
persona] affection for him. The genius of the young poet, however, was honored 
by Shelley, who, on hearing of his illness in the summer of 1820, had invited him 
to Pisa. Deeply moved, through his imagination rather than his affections, by the 
story of the death of Keats, Shelley did homage to his memory in the elegy of 
" Adonais," which takes its place in literature beside the laments of Moschus for 
Bion and of Milton for Lycidas. Beforents close the poem rises into an impas- 
sioned hymn not of death but of immortal life. 

The pleasure of a visit to Byron at Ravenna in August was more than marred by 
Byron's sudden disclosure of certain shocking accusations which had been brought 
against Shelley in his domestic life. An ardent letter of vindication, to be for- 
warded by Byron to the English Consul at Venice, was written by Mary; but it 
never reached Mr. Hoppner, for whom it was intended, and was found among 
Byron's papers after his death. "That my beloved Shelley should stand thus 
slandered in your minds," — so Mary wrote — "he the gentlest and most humane 
of creatures — is more painful to me, oh ! far more painful than words can express." 
If they could but escape to some solitude far from the world and its calumnies! 
Or, since this was impossible, if they could gather around them in their Pisan home 



i6 INTRODUCTION. 



a little circle of true and loyal friends! Of these Byron — it was hoped — might 
be one, for he was about to quit Ravenna, and he desired them to hire a house for 
himself and the Countess Guiccioli at Fisa. Leigh Hunt, at home in England, had 
for some time past been seriously ill; he also might form one of their company, and 
the new periodical, The liberal, of which there had been talk, might be started 
for his benefit by the literary coalition. 

" I am full of thoughts and plans," Shelley wrote to Hunt in August 1821. Not 
one of his larger designs was achieved, but in the summer or early autumn of that 
year he rapidly produced his " Hellas," remarkable as an idealized treatment of 
contemporary events. In the " Persge " of vEschylus he found a precedent and 
to some extent a model for his poetic dealing with current facts. The phantom of 
Mahomet H. is suggested by the figure of Darius in the " Persians ; " but instead 
of the ode of lamentation which closes the Greek play, the lyrical prophecy with 
which "Hellas" ends is a song of joy and love for the whole world. 

"Lord Byron is established here," Shelley wrote from Pisa in January 1822, 
" and we are constant companions." They rode together; practised pistol-shooting 
or played billiards; interchanged their views on literary and social questions. 
Shelley felt towards Byron as towards a great creative power, which subdued him 
to admiration; yet there were times when he was repelled by proofs of the coarser 
fibre of Byron's moral nature. The opening year brought a new acquaintance to 
Pisa — Edward John Trelawny, a young Cornish gentleman, who had led a life of 
various adventure by sea and land. Trelawny, " with his knight-errant aspect, 
dark, handsome, and mustachioed," interested Shelley and Mary more than any 
acquaintance whom they had made since the departure of Mavrocordato. How 
Shelley charmed Trelawny may be read in the delightful ' ' Recollections ' ' of the latter, 
which give us the most vivid image of the poet in the closing months of his life. 
Trelawny, Williams, and Shelley were lovers of the sea. It was agreed that a boat 
should be built, and that a seaside house should be taken for the summer at Spez- 
zia. Meanwhile Shelley worked now and again at his historical play of " Charles 
I.," and wrote some of those exquisite lyrical poems inspired by the grace and 
subtle attraction of Jane Williams, the wife of his young and bright-tempered 
companion. 

Casa Magni, the house taken for the summer migrants, stands on the margin 
of the sea, near the fishing-village of San Terenzo on the eastern side of the Bay of 
Spezzia. The first days were saddened by a grief to all, but in a special degree a 
grief to Miss Clairmont — the death at the convent of Bagnacavallo of little Alle- 
gra. Mary was in delicate health, and found the lonely house by the sea oppres- 
sive to her spirits. Shelley's overwrought nerves conjured up visionary forms: on 
one occasion the figure of Allegra rose smiling upon him from the moonlit sea, 
clapping its hands for joy. But when the long-expected boat rounded the point of 
Porto Venere all was gladness and bustle of expectation. " We have now," wrote 
Williams, who with Jane occupied a part of Casa Magni, " a perfect plaything for 
the summer." While during the heats of the June days Shelley rested in his boat, 
or gazed from shore on the splendors of the sea, or on moonlight nights sat among 
the rocks, he wrote the noble fragments of his last great unfinished poem, "The 
Triumph of Life." It contains perhaps the wisest thoughts of his whole life; it 
expresses a mood of pathetic renunciation, with insight reached after error, and 
serenity attained through passion. In its general design and in the form of verse it 
follows Petrarch's "Triumph of Love; " in the details of its imagery it sometimes 
approaches the manner of Dante. 

The return to Casa Magni of Claire, after a couple of weeks' absence, was al- 
most immediately followed by a calamity which threatened serious risk to Mary's 
life — a dangerous miscarriage. By Shelley's energy and promptitude her life was 



INTRODUCTION. 17 

saved; but the strain upon his nerves again caused him to be troubled by frequent 
visions. On 19th June news came which rejoiced his heart — Leigh Hunt and his 
family had arrived in Italy. It was glorious midsummer weather; the boat, with 
Shelley and Williams on board, was put to sea, and after a prosperous run anchor 
was cast in the port of Leghorn. Next morning the long-parted friends, Hunt and 
Shelley, met. "I am inexpressibly delighted," cried Shelley, "you cannot think 
how inexpressibly happy it makes me." " He was looking better," wrote Hunt, 
" than I had ever seen him; we talked of a thousand things — we anticipated a 
thousand pleasures." On Monday, 8th July, the aspect of the sky seemed to por- 
tend a change of weather; but the breeze was favorable for a return to Lerici. Be- 
tween one and two o'clock the boat left the harbor. It was observed about ten 
miles out at sea, off Via Reggio; then the haze of a summer storm hid it from view. 

Meanwhile Mary, who had been loath to allow Shelley to leave her, and Jane 
Williams watched and waited. Days of misery and dreadful suspense went by. 
At length the widowed women could endure it no longer, and posted to Pisa to 
make inquiries of Byron and Hunt. Even then all hope was not extinct; the boat 
might have been blown to Corsica or Elba. Mary and Jane hastened back to 
Lerici, Trelawny having undertaken to renew the search in the direction of Leg- 
horn. On the evening of 19th July he returned; "All was over," writes Mary; 
" all was quiet now; they had been found washed on shore." 

Two bodies had been thrown upon the beach, one near Via Reggio, the other 
in Tuscan territory. The tall, slight, figure, the volume of Sophocles, and Keats's 
poems, identified the body of Shelley. According to the strict laws of Italian 
quarantine, the corpses should have remained under quicklime in the sands. But 
by special permission arrangements were made for their cremation. Trelawny, 
Byron, and Hunt were present. The heart of Shelley was snatched by Trelawny 
from the flames; the ashes were reverently collected. In the old Protestant burial- 
ground at Rome, where lay the body of Shelley's son, hard by the tomb of Caius 
Cestius, the casket containing the ashes was committed to the ground. 

Mary Shelley survived her husband for nearly thirty years; she died on 2ist 
February 185 1. Charles Bysshe, the son of Shelley's first wife, died in early life. 
Shelley's last-born son, Percy Florence, succeeded to the baronetcy on the death 
of his grandfather in April 1844. He died on 5th December 1889. A monument 
to Shelley, by Weekes, is erected in the parish church of Christchurch, Hants, 
The relics, portraits, journals, manuscripts, and letters of Shelley and Mary, duly 
ordered by Lady Shelley's hands, are preserved at Boscombe Manor, near Bourne- 
mouth. 

All who love Shelley's poetry are under inexpressible obligations to Mary Shel- 
ley, who gave to the world the great body of his posthumous writings, edited his 
works with lovirig care, though not with infallible accuracy, and added the inesti- 
mable memorials of his life, which may be read in her notes to the poems. Our 
debt is also great to three distinguished Shelley scholars: to Dr. Garnett, whose 
" Relics of Shelley," recovered from manuscripts which are often a tangle of correc- 
tions, form the most precious addition to Shelley's poetical works which has ap- 
peared since the publication of the Posthumous Poems, 1824; to Mr. W. M. 
Rossetti, and to Mr. Forman. Mr. Rossetti increased the body of Shelley's pub- 
lished poetry by several pieces of value, and in particular added largely to the 
known fragments of Charles I. from a manuscript most difficult to decipher. His 
principles in dealing with the text led him to some changes which cannot be sus- 
tained, but in not a few instances he recovered the true text by happy emendation. 
Mr. Forman added to the published poems of Shelley the second part of the 
"Daemon of the World," and some other pieces. His devotion to the author of 
his choice, his untiring zeal as a collector, his learning, his accuracy, his good 



1 8 INTR on UC TION. 



judgment, have made him our chief living authority on all that relates to Shelley's 
writings. The present volume has gained much from Mr. Forman's labors; it is 
impossible but that it should be so. In its general plan, however, it differs mate- 
rially from his editions, which reprint in chronological order the several volumes 
published during Shelley's life. In giving "The Revolt of Islam" rather than 
" Laon and Cythna," which Mr. Forman reprints, we follow the example of Mrs. 
Shelley; but in Notes to the present volume the readings of "Laon and Cythna" 
will be found. Mr. Forman's annotated edition is unquestionably that to which 
appeal must be made in any question of doubt on any point of Shelley scholarship. 
But perhaps if Mr. Rossetti modified the text of the early editions somewhat too 
freely, Mr. Forman has sometimes been over-conservative of peculiarities of spell- 
ing and obvious errors of punctuation. When these cloud the sense, it seems per- 
missible to make a correction in an edition designed for general use. Yet I should 
be slow to alter erroneous punctuation, if the meaning be not obscured, for such 
punctuation may have a metrical value. As to spelling, while in several instances 
(as "blosmy," "glode") it is desirable to preserve Shelley's spelling, it would be 
impossible, or at least intolerable, to follow his manuscripts in every instance 
("thier" for "their," " mein " for "mien," etc.). A great poet is not of an age 
but for all time. While texts of Shakspeare, Milton, and Pope, prepared for spe- 
cialists, may rightly retain the peculiarities of the early editions, there must also be 
texts of Shakspeare, Milton, and Pope, in which every obstacle to the reader's 
pleasure, caused by the early printers, ought to be removed. 

All ascertained poems which have appeared in previous editions are included in 
the present volume. " The Wandering Jew " is not, and probably ought not, to be 
given as the work of Shelley. Two doubtful pieces — "The Dinner Party Antici- 
pated, A Paraphrase of Horace's 19th Ode, B. III.," and "The Magic Horse, 
translated from the Italian of Cristofano Bronzino " (given in the appendix to 
Mr. Forman's library edition) — are excluded as of uncertain authorship. A con- 
siderable body of Shelley's early verse existing in a manuscript book owned 
by the poet's grandson, Mr. Esdaile, remains unprinted. Mr. Esdaile, who kindly 
allowed me to print certain poems of biographical interest in my " Life of Shelley," 
has expressed his desire that they should not be now reprinted. It was, as he 
believes, the wish of Shelley's daughter lanthe that the poems in this manuscript 
volume should not be included in an edition of her father's poetical works. 

An arrangement of the poems differing somewhat from that of Mrs. Shelley has 
involved the displacing of a few paragraphs of her Notes, so that these paragraphs 
may be read in connection with the poems to which they refer. In this particular 
the treatment of Mr. Rossetti has been adopted. The fragments of verse are 
placed among the poems of the years to which they respectively belong, as they 
have been placed by Mr. Forman, but in a somewhat different order. They have 
perhaps a better chance of being read with interest in such an arrangement as this 
than when they are massed together as a group by themselves. The titles of the 
shorter fragments are those of Mr. Forman, in cases where his titles seemed inevi- 
tably right; I have not felt at liberty to adopt his titles in other cases, and have 
proposed, for convenience of reference, titles of my own devising. Perhaps I 
have ventured too far in naming a fragment on p. 531 " Song of the Furies." A 
few notes, chiefly textual, are added at the end of the volume. In preparing these 
use has been made of Mr. Woodberry's " Notes on the MS. Volume of Shelley's 
Poems in the Library of Harvard College." A few corrections in the text of some 
of the " Juvenilia " are made from Shelley's manuscript. 



EDWARD DOWDEN, 



PREFACE BY MRS. SHELLEY 
TO FIRST COLLECTED EDITION, 1839. 



Obstacles have long existed to my presenting the public with a perfect edition 
of Shelley's Poems. These being at last happily removed, I hasten to fulfil an 
important duty, — that of giving the productions of a sublime genius to the world, 
with all the correctness possible, and of, at the same time, detailing the history of 
those productions, as they sprang, living and warm, from his heart and brain. 
I abstain from any remark on the occurrences of his private life, except inasmuch 
as the passions which they engendered inspired his poetry. This is not the time 
to relate the truth; and I should reject any coloring of the truth. No account 
of these events has ever been given at all approaching reality in their details, either 
as regards himself or others; nor shall I further allude to them than to remark that 
the errors of action committed by a man as noble and generous as Shelley, may, as 
far as he only is concerned, be fearlessly avowed by those who loved him, in the 
firm conviction that, were they judged impartially, his character would stand in 
fairei and brighter light than that of any contemporary. Whatever faults he had 
ought to find extenuation among his fellows, since they prove him to be human; 
without them, the exalted nature of his soul would have raised him into something 
divine. 

The qualities that struck any one newly introduced to Shelley were, — First, 
a gentle and cordial goodness that animated his intercourse with warm affection 
and helpful sympathy. The other, the eagerness and ardor with which he was 
attached to the cause of human happiness and improvement; and the fervent elo- 
quence with which he discussed such subjects. His conversation was marked by 
its happy abundance, and the beautiful language in which he clothed his poetic 
ideas and philosophical notions. To defecate life of its misery and its evil was the 
ruling passion of his soul; he dedicated to it every power of his mind, every pulsa- 
tion of his heart. He looked on political freedom as the direct agent to effect the 
happiness of mankind; and thus any new-sprung hope of liberty inspired a joy and 
an exultation more intense and wild than he could have felt for any personal 
advantage. Those who have never experienced the workings of passion on general 
and unselfish subjects cannot understand this; and it must be difficult of compre- 
hension to the younger generation rising around, since they cannot remember the 
scorn and hatred with which the partisans of reform were regarded some few years 
ago, nor the persecutions to which they were exposed. He had been from youth 
the victim of the state of feeling inspired by the reaction of the French Revolution; 
and believing firmly in the justice and excellence of his views, it cannot be won- 
dered that a nature as sensitive, as impetuous, and as generous as his, should put 
its whole force into the attempt to alleviate for others the evils of those systems from 

19 



20 PRE FA CE. 

which he had himself suffered. Many advantages attended his birth; he spurned 
them all when balanced with what he considered his duties. He was generous to 
imprudence, devoted to heroism. 

These characteristics breathe throughout his poetry. The struggle for human 
weal; the resolution firm to martyrdom; the impetuous pursuit, the glad triumph 
in good; the determination not to despair; — such were the features that marked 
those of his works which he regarded with most complacency, as sustained by a 
lofty subject and useful aim. 

In addition to these, his poems may be divided into two classes, — the purely imagi- 
native, and those which sprang from the emotions of his heart. Among the former 
maybe classed the "Witch of Atlas," "Adonais," and his latest composition, 
left imperfect, the "Triumph of Life." In the first of these particularly he gave 
the reins to his fancy, and luxuriated in every idea as it rose; in all there is that 
sense of mystery which formed an essential portion of his perception of life — a 
clinging to the subtler inner spirit, rather than to the outward form — a curious and 
metaphysical anatomy of human passion and perception. 

The second class is, of course, the more popular, as appealing at once to 
emotions common to us all; some of these rest on the passion of love; others on 
grief and despondency; others on the sentiments inspired by natural objects. 
Shelley's conception of love w^as exalted, absorbing, allied to all that is purest and 
noblest in our nature, and warmed by earnest passion; such it appears when he 
gave it a voice in verse. Yet he was usually averse to expressing these feelings, 
except when highly idealized ; and many of his more beautiful effusions he had 
cast aside unfinished, and they were never seen by me till after I had lost him. 
Others, as for instance "Rosalind and Helen" and "Lines written among the 
Euganean Hills," I found among his papers by chance; and with some difficulty 
urged him to complete them. There are others, such as the " Ode to the Skylark " 
and "The Cloud," which, in the opinion of many critics, bear a purer poetical 
stamp than any other of his productions. They were written as his mind prompted : 
listening to the carolling of the bird, aloft in the azure sky of Italy; or marking the 
cloud as it sped across the heavens, while he floated in his boat on the Thames. 

No poet was ever warmed by a more genuine and unforced inspiration. His 
extreme sensibility gave the intensity of passion to his intellectual pursuits; and 
rendered his mind keenly alive to every perception of outward objects, as well as 
to his internal sensations. Such a gift is, among the sad vicissitudes of human life, 
the disappointments we meet, and the galling sense of our own mistakes and errors, 
fraught with pain; to escape from such, he delivered up his soul to poetry, and felt 
happy when he sheltered himself, from the influence of human sympathies, in the wild- 
est regions of fancy. His imagination has been termed too brilliant, his thoughts too 
subtle. He loved to idealize reality; and this is a taste shared by few. We are 
willing to have our passing whims exalted into passions, for this gratifies our 
vanity; but few of us understand or sympathize with the endeavor to ally the love 
of abstract beauty, and adoration of abstract good, the rh dyaUop kuI to KaUv of the 
Socratic philosophers, with our sympathies with our kind. In this, Shelley re- 
sembled Plato; both taking more delight in the abstract and the ideal than in the 
special and tangible. This did not result from imitation; for it was not till Shelley 
resided in Italy that he made Plato his study. He then translated his ' ' Symposium ' ' 
and his " Ion;" and the English language boasts of no more brilliant composition 
than Plato's Praise of Love translated by Shelley. To return to his own poetry. 
The luxury of imagination, which sought nothing beyond itself (as a child burdens 
itself with spring flowers, thinking of no use beyond the enjoyment of gathering 
them), often showed itself in his verses: they will only be appreciated by minds 
which have resemblance to his own; and the mystic subtlety of many of his thoughts 



PREFACE. 21 

will share the same fate. The metaphys'ical strain that characterizes much of 
what he has written was, indeed, the portion of his works to which, apart from 
those whose scope was to awaken mankind to aspirations for what he considered 
the true and good, he was himself particularly attached. There is much, however, 
that speaks to the many. When he would consent to dismiss these huntings after 
the obscure (which, entwined with his nature as they were, he did with difficulty), 
no poet ever expressed in sweeter, more heart-reaching, or more passionate verse, 
the gentler or more forcible emotions of the soul. 

A wise friend once wrote to Shelley : " You are still very young, and in certain 
essential respects you do not yet sufficiently perceive that you are so." It is sel- 
dom that the young know what youth is, till they have got beyond its period; and 
time was not given him to attain this knowledge. It must be remembered that 
there is the stamp of such inexperience on all he wrote; he had not completed his 
nine-and-twentieth year when he died. The calm of middle life did not add the 
seal of the virtues which adorn maturity to those generated by the vehement spirit 
of youth. Through life also he was a martyr to ill health, and constant pain 
wound up his nerves to a pitch of susceptibility that rendered his views of life 
different from those of a man in the enjoyment of healthy sensations. Perfectly 
gentle and forbearing in manner, he suffered a good deal of internal irritability, or 
rather excitement, and his fortitude to bear was almost always on the stretch; and 
thus, during a short life, had gone through more experience of sensation than many 
whose existence is protracted. " If I die to-morrow," he said, on the eve of his 
unanticipated death, " I have lived to be older than my father." The weight of 
thought and feeling burdened him heavily; you read his sufferings in his attenuated 
frame, while you perceived the mastery he held over them in his animated counte- 
nance and brilliant eyes. 

He died, and the world showed no outward sign. But his influence over man- 
kind, though slow in growth, is fast augmenting; and, in the ameliorations that 
have taken place in the political state of his country, we may trace in part the oper- 
ation of his arduous struggles. His spirit gathers peace in its new state from the 
sense that, though late, his exertions were not made in vain, and in the progress of 
the liberty he so fondly loved. 

He died, and his place, among those who knew him intimately, has never been 
filled up. He walked beside them like a spirit of good to comfort and benefit — • 
to enlighten the darkness of life with irradiations of genius, to cheer it with his 
sympathy and love. Any one, once attached to Shelley, must feel all other affec- 
tions, however true and fond, as wasted on barren soil in comparison. It is our 
best consolation to know that such a pure-minded and exalted being was once 
among us, and now exists where we hope one day to join him; — although the 
intolerant, in their blindness, poured down anathemas, the Spirit of Good, who can 
judge the heart, never rejected him. 

In the notes appended to the poems I have endeavored to narrate the origin 
and history of each. The loss of nearly all letters and papers which refer to his 
early life renders the execution more imperfect than it would otherwise have been. 
I have, however, the liveliest recollection of all that was done and said during the 
period of my knowing him. Every impression is as clear as if stamped yesterday, 
and I have no apprehension of any mistake in my statements as far as they go. 
In other respects I am indeed incompetent : but I feel the importance of the task, 
and regard it as my most sacred duty. I endeavor to fulfil it in a manner he 
would himself approve; and hope, in this publication, to lay the first stone of a 
monument due to Shelley's genius, his sufferings, and his virtues: 

Se al seguir son tarda, 
Forse avverrk che '1 bel nome g'entile 
Coasacrer6 cou questa staaca peaaa. 



POSTSCRIPT IN SECOND EDITION OF 1839. 



In revising this new edition, and carefully consulting Shelley's scattered and 
confused papers, I found a few fragments which had hitherto escaped me, and was 
enabled to complete a few poems hitherto left unfinished. What at one time 
escapes the searching eye, dimmed by its own earnestness, becomes clear at a 
future period. By the aid of a friend, I also present some poems complete and 
correct which hitherto have been defaced by various mistakes and omissions. It 
was suggested that the poem "To the Queen of my Heart " was falsely attributed 
to Shelley. I certainly find no trace of it among his papers; and, as those of his 
intimate friends whom I have consulted never heard of it, I omit it. 

Two poems are added of some length, " Swellfoot the Tyrant" and "Peter 
Bell the Third." I have mentioned the circumstances under which they were writ- 
ten in the notes; and need only add that they are conceived in a very different 
spirit from Shelley's usual compositions. They are specimens of the burlesque and 
fanciful; but, although they adopt a familiar style and homely imagery, there shine 
through the radiance of the poet's imagination the earnest views and opinions of 
the politician and the moralist. 

At my request the publisher has restored the omitted passages of Queen Mab. 
I now present this edition as a complete collection of my husband's poetical works, 
and I do not foresee that I can hereafter add to or take away a word or line. 

Putney, November 6, 1839. 



PREFACE BY MRS. SHELLEY 

TO THE VOLUME OF POSTHUMOUS POEMS, 

Published in 1824. 



• In nobil sangue vita umile e queta, 

Ed in alto intelletto un puro core ; 
Frutto senile in sul giovenil fiore, 
E in aspetto pensoso anima lieta. — Petrarca. 

It had been my wish, on presenting the public with the Posthumous Poems of 
Mr. Shelley, to have accompanied them by a biographical notice; as it appeared 
to me that at this moment a narration of the events of my husband's life would 
come more gracefully from other hands than mine, I applied to Mr. Leigh Hunt. 
The distinguished friendship that Mr. Shelley felt for him, and the enthusiastic 
affection with which Mr. Leigh Hunt clings to his friend's memory, seemed to 
point him out as the person best calculated for such an undertaking. His absence 
from this country, which prevented our mutual explanation, has unfortunately ren- 
dered my scheme abortive. I do not doubt but that on some other occasion he 
will pay this tribute to his lost friend, and sincerely regret that the volume which I 
edit has not been honored by its insertion. 

The comparative solitude in which Mr. Shelley lived was the occasion that he 
was personally known to few; and his fearless enthusiasm in the cause which he 
considered the most sacred upon earth, the improvement of the moral and physical 
state of mankind, was the chief reason why he, like other illustrious reformers, 
was pursued by hatred and calumny. No man was ever more devoted than he to 
the endeavor of making those around him happy; no man ever possessed friends 
more unfeignedly attached to him. The ungrateful world did not feel his loss, and 
the gap it made seemed to close as quickly over his memory as the murderous sea 
above his living frame. Hereafter men will lament that his transcendent powers 
of intellect were extinguished before they had bestowed on them their choicest 
treasures. To his friends his loss is irremediable: the wise, the brave, the gentle, 
is gone forever ! He is to them as a bright vision, whose radiant track, left behind 
in the memory, is worth all the realities that society can afford. Before the critics 
contradict me, let them appeal to any one who had ever known him. To see him 
was to love him: and his presence, like Ithuriel's spear, was alone sufficient to dis- 
close the falsehood of the tale which his enemies whispered in the ear of the 
ignorant world. 

His life was spent in the contemplation of Nature, in arduous study, or in acts 
of kindness and affection. He was an elegant scholar and a profound metaphysi- 
cian; without possessing much scientific knowledge, he was unrivalled in the just- 

23 



24 PREFACE. 

ness and extent of his observations on natural objects; he knew every plant by its 
name, and was familiar with the history and habits of every production of the earth; 
he could interpret without a fault each appearance in the sky; and the varied phe- 
nomena of heaven and earth filled him with deep emotion. He made his study 
and reading-room of the shadowed copse, the stream, the lake, and the waterfall. 
Ill health and continual pain preyed upon his powers; and the solitude in which 
we lived, particularly on our first arrival in Italy, although congenial to his feel- 
ings, must frequently have weighed upon his spirits; those beautiful and affecting 
" Lines written in Dejection near Naples" were composed at such an interval; 
but, when in health, his spirits were buoyant and youthful to an extraordinary 
degree. 

Such was his love for Nature that every page of his poetry is associated, in the 
minds of his friends, with the loveliest scenes of the countries which he inhabited. 
In early life he visited the most beautiful parts of this country and Ireland. After- 
wards the Alps of Switzerland became his inspirers. "Prometheus Unbound" 
was written among the deserted and flower-grown ruins of Rome; and, when he 
made his home under the Pisan hills, their roofless recesses harbored him as he 
composed the " Witch of Atlas," " Adonais," and "Hellas." In the wild but 
beautiful Bay of Spezzia, the winds and waves which he loved became his play- 
mates. His days were chiefly spent on the water; the management of his boat, 
its alterations and improvements, were his principal occupation. At night, when 
the unclouded moon shone on the calm sea, he often went alone in his little shallop 
to the rocky caves that bordered it, and, sitting beneath their shelter, wrote the 
"Triumph of Life," the last of his productions. The beauty but strangeness of 
this lonely place, the refined pleasure which he felt in the companionship of a few 
selected friends, our entire sequestration from the rest of the world, all contributed 
CO render this period of his life one of continued enjoyment. I am convinced 
that the two months we passed there were the happiest which he had ever known : 
his health even rapidly improved, and he was never better than when I last saw 
him, full of spirits and joy, embark for Leghorn, that he might there welcome 
Leigh Hunt to Italy. I was to have accompanied him; but illness confined me to 
my room, and thus put the seal on my misfortune. His vessel bore out of sight 
with a favorable wind, and I remained awaiting his return by the breakers of that 
sea which was about to engulf him. 

He spent a week at Pisa, employed in kind offices toward his friend, and enjoy- 
ing with keen delight the renewal of their intercourse. He then embarked with 
Mr. Williams, the chosen and beloved sharer of his pleasures and of his fate, to 
return to us. We waited for them in vain; the sea by its restless moaning seemed 
to desire to inform us of what we would not learn : — but a veil may well be 
drawn over such misery. The real anguish of those moments transcended all the 
fictions that the most glowing imagination ever portrayed; our seclusion, the savage 
nature of the inhabitants of the surrounding villages, and our immediate vicinity 
to the troubled sea, combined to imbue with strange horror our days of uncertainty. 
The truth was at last known, — a truth that made our loved and lovely Italy appear 
a tomb, its sky a pall. Every heart echoed the deep lament, and my only consola- 
tion was in the praise and earnest love that each voice bestowed and each counte- 
nance demonstrated for him we had lost, — not, I fondly hope, forever; his 
unearthly and elevated nature is a pledge of the continuation of his being, although 
in an altered form. Rome received his ashes; they are deposited beneath its 
weed-grown wall, and " the world's sole monument " is enriched by his remains. 

I must add a few words concerning the contents of this volume. "Julian and 
Maddalo," the "Witch of Atlas," and most of the Translations, were written 
some years ago; and, with the exception of the " Cyclops," and the Scenes from 



PREFACE. 25 

the " Magico Prodigioso," may be considered as having received the author's 
uhimate corrections. The "Triumph of Life " was his last work, and was left in 
so unfinished a state that I arranged it in its present form with great difficulty. 
All his poems which were scattered in periodical works are collected in this volume, 
and I have added a reprint of " Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude:" the difficulty 
with which a copy can be obtained is the cause of its republication. Many of the 
Miscellaneous Poems, written on the spur of the occasion, and never retouched, I 
found among his manuscript books, and have carefully copied. I have subjoined, 
whenever I have been able, the date of their composition. 

I do not know whether the critics will reprehend the insertion of some of the 
most imperfect among them; but I frankly own that I have been more actuated by 
the fear lest any monument of his genius should escape me than the wish of pre- 
senting nothing but what was complete to the fastidious reader. I feel secure that 
the lovers of Shelley's poetry (who know how, more than any poet of the present 
day, every line and word he wrote is instinct with peculiar beauty) will pardon and 
thank me: I consecrate this volume to them. 

The size of this collection has prevented the insertion of any prose pieces. 
They will hereafter appear in a separate publication. 

MARY W. SHELLEY. 
London, June i, 1824. 



SHELLEY'S POETICAL WORKS. 



QUEEN MAB: 

A PHILOSOPHICAL POEM, WITH NOTES. 

ficrasez I'infame ! 

Correspondance de Voltaire. 

Avia Pieridum peragro loca, nullius ante 
Trita solo ; juvat integros accedere fonteis ; 
Atque haurire : juvatque novos decerpere flores. 



Unde prius nulli velarint tempera musae. 
Primum quod magnis doceo de rebus ; et arctis 
Religionum animos nodis exsolvere pergo. 

Lucrei. lib. iv. 

Abs irov (TTw, Kal KOVfJ-ov Kivriam- 

A rchimedes. 



TO HARRIET ***** 

Whose is the love that gleaming through 

the world, 
Wards off the poisonous arrow of its 
scorn? 
Whose is the warm and partial praise, 
Virtue's most sweet reward? 

Beneath whose looks did my reviving soul 
Riper in truth and virtuous daring grow? 
Whose eyes have I gazed fondly on, 
And loved mankind the more? 

Harriet! on thine: — thou wert my 

purer mind; 
Thou wert the inspiration of my song; 

Thine are these early wilding flowers, 

Though garlanded by me. 



Then press into thy breast this pledge of 

love; 
And know, though time may change and 
years may roll. 
Each floweret gathered in my heart 
It consecrates to thine. 



QUEEN MAB. 
I. 

How wonderful is Death, 

Death and his brother Sleep ! 
One, pale as yonder waning moon 

With lips of lurid blue ! 
The other, rosy as the morn 

When throned on ocean's wave 

It blushes o'er the world: 
Yet both so passing wonderful ! 

Hath then the gloomy Power 
Whose reign is in the tainted sepulchres 
Seized on her sinless soul? 
Must then that peerless form 
Which love and admiration cannot view 
Without a beating heart, those azure 

veins 
Which steal like streams along a field of 
snow, 
That lovely outline, which is fair 
As breathing marble, perish? 
Must putrefactiori's breath 
Leave nothing of this heavenly sight 

But loathsomeness and ruin? 
Spare nothing but a gloomy theme, 
On which the lightest heart might mor« 
alize ? 



QUEEN MAB. 



Or is it only a sweet slumber 

Stealing o'er sensation, 
Which the breath of roseate morning 

Chaseth into darkness? 

Will lanthe wake again, 
And give that faithful bosom joy 
Whose sleepless spirit waits to catch 
Light, life and rapture from her smile ? 

Yes ! she will wake again, 
Although her glowing limbs are motion- 
less, 
And silent those sweet lips, 
Once breathing eloquence, 
That might have soothed a tiger's rage. 
Or thawed the cold heart of a conqueror. 
Her dewy eyes are closed, 
And on their lids, whose texture fine 
Scarce hides the dark blue orbs be- 
neath, 
The baby Sleep is pillowed: 
Her golden tresses shade 
The bosom's stainless pride, 
Curhng like tendrils of the parasite 
Around a marble column. 

Hark ! whence that rushing sound? 

'T is like the wondrous strain 
That round a lonely ruin swells. 
Which, wandering on the echoing 
shore, 

The enthusiast hears at evening : 
'T is softer than the west wind's sigh; 
'T is wilder than the unmeasured notes 
Of that strange lyre whose strings 
The genii of the breezes sweep: 

Those lines of rainbow light 
Are like the moonbeams when they fall 
Through some cathedral window, but the 
teints 

Are such as may not find 

Comparison on earth. 

Behold the chariot of the Fairy Queen ! 

Celestial coursers paw the unyielding air; 

Their filmy pennons at her word they furl. 

And stop obedient to the reins of light : 
These the Queen of spells drew in, 
She spread a charm around the spot. 

And leaning graceful from the ethereal 
car, 
Long did she gaze, and silently, 
Upon the slumbering maid. 



Oh ! not the visioned poet in his dreams, 
When silvery clouds float through the 

wildered brain, 
When every sight of lovely, wild and 
grand 
Astonishes, enraptures, elevates. 
When fancy at a glance combines 
The wondrous and the beautiful, — 
So bright, so fair, so wild a shape 
Hath ever yet beheld, 
As that which reined the coursers of the 
air. 
And poured the magic of her gaze 
Upon the maiden's sleep. 

The broad and yellow moon 
Shone dimly through her form — 

That form of faultless symmetry; 

The pearly and pellucid car 

Moved not the moonlight's line: 
'T was not an earthly pageant : 

Those who had looked upon the sight, 
Passing all human glory. 
Saw not the yellow moon, 
Saw not the mortal scene, 
Heard not the night-wind's rush, 
Heard not an earthly sound. 
Saw but the fairy pageant. 
Heard but the heavenly strains 
That filled the lonely dwelling. 

The Fairy's frame was slight, yon 

fibrous cloud. 
That catches but the palest tinge of even, 
And which the straining eye can hardly 

seize _ 

When melting into eastern twilight's* 

shadow. 
Were scarce so thin, so slight; but the 

fair star 
That gems the glittering coronet of morn. 
Sheds not a light so mild, so powerful. 
As that which, bursting from the Fairy's 

form, 
Spread a purpureal halo round the scene, 
Yet with an undulating motion. 
Swayed to her outline gracefully. 



From her celestial car 
The Fairy Queen descended, 
And thrice she waved her wand 
Circled with wreaths of amaranth: 
Her thin and misty form 



\ 



QUEEN MAB. 



29 



Moved with the moving air, 
And the clear silver tones, 
As thus she spoke, were such 
As are unheard by all but gifted ear. 

FAIRY. 

Stars ! your balmiest influence shed ! 
Elements ! your wrath suspend ! 
Sleep, Ocean, in the rocky bounds 
That circle thy domain ! 
Let not a breath be seen to stir 
Around yon grass-grown ruin's height, 
Let even the restless gossamer 
Sleep on the moveless air ! 
Soul of lanthe ! thou, 
Judged alone worthy of the envied boon, 
That waits the good and the sincere; that 

waits 
Those who have struggled, and with 

resolute will 
Vanquished earth's pride and meanness, 

burst the chains, 
The icy chains of custom, and have shone 
The day-stars of their age; — Soul of 
lanthe ! 

Awake ! arise ! 

Sudden arose 
^ lanthe's Soul; it stood 
All beautiful in naked purity. 
The perfect semblance of its bodily frame. 
Instinct with inexpressible beauty and 
grace, » 
Each stain of earthliness 
Had passed away, it reassumed 
Its native dignity, and stood 
Immortal amid ruin. 

Upon the couch the body lay 
Wrapt in the depth of slumber : 
Its features were fixed and meaningless, 

Yet animal life was there. 
And every organ yet performed 
Its natural functions: 't was a sight 
Of wonder to behold the body and soul. 
The self-same lineaments, the same 
Marks of identity were there : 
Yet, oh, how different ! One aspires to 

Heaven, 
Pants for its sempiternal heritage, 
And ever-changing, ever-rising still, 
Wantons in endless being. 



The other, for a time the unwilling sport 
Of circumstance and passion, struggles on; 
Fleets through its sad duration rapidly: 
Then like an useless and worn-out ma- 
chine. 
Rots, perishes, and passes. 

FAIRY. 

Spirit ! who hast dived so deep; 
Spirit ! who hast soared so high; 
Thou the fearless, thou the mild. 
Accept the boon thy worth hath earned, 
Ascend the car with me. 

SPIRIT. 

Do I dream? Is this new feeling 
But a visioned ghost of slumber? 
If indeed I am a soul, 
A free, a disembodied soul, 
Speak again to me. 

FAIRY. 

I am the Fairy Mab; to me 't is given 
The wonders of the human world to keep : 
The secrets of the immeasurable past, 
In the unfaihng consciences of men, 
Those stern, unflattering chroniclers, I 

find: 
The future, from the causes which arise 
In each event, I gather: not the sting 
Which retributive memory implants 
In the hard bosom of the selfish man; 
Nor that ecstatic and exulting throb 
Which virtue's votary feels when he sums 

up 
The thoughts and actions of a well-spent 

day 
Are unforeseen, unregistered by me: 
And it is yet permitted me, to rend 
The veil of mortal frailty, that the spirit 
Clothed in its changeless purity, may know 
How soonest to accomplish the great end 
For which it hath its being, and may taste 
That peace, which in the end all life will 

share. 
This is the meed of virtue; happy Soul, 
Ascend the car with me ! 

The chains of earth's immurement 
Fell from lanthe's spirit; 



30 



QUEEN MAB. 



They shrank and brake like bandages of 
straw 
Beneath a wakened giant's strength. 

She knew her glorious change, 
And felt in apprehension uncontrolled 

New raptures opening round : 
Each day-dream of her mortal life, 
Each frenzied vision of the slumbers 
That closed each well-spent day, 
Seemed now to meet reality. 
The Fairy and the Soul proceeded; 
The silver clouds disparted; 
And as the car of magic they ascended, 
Again the speechless music swelled, 
Again the coursers of the air 
Unfurled their azure pennons, and the 
Queen 
Shaking the beamy reins 
Bade them pursue their way. 

The magic car moved on. 
The night was fair, and countless stars 
Studded heaven's dark blue vault, — 

Just o'er the eastern wave 
Peeped the first faint smile of morn: — 
The magic car moved on — 
From the celestial hoofs 
The atmosphere in flaming sparkles flew. 

And where the burning wheels 
Eddied above the mountain's loftiest 
peak, 
Was traced a line of lightning. 
Now it flew far above a rock, 
The utmost verge of earth. 
The rival of the Andes, whose dark 
brow 
Lowered o'er th? silver sea. 

Far, far below the chariot's path. 
Calm as a slumbering babe. 
Tremendous Ocean lay. 
The mirror of its stillness showed 
The pale and waning stars. 
The chariot's fiery track, 
And the gray light of morn 
Tingeing those fleecy clouds 
That canopied the dawn. 
Seemed it, that the chariot's way 
Lay through the midst of an immense 

concave, 
Radiant with million constellations, tinged 
With shades of infinite color. 



And semicircled with a belt 
Flashing incessant meteors. 

The magic car moved on. 
As they approached their goal 
The coursers seemed to gather speed; 
The sea no longer was distinguished; 
earth 
Appeared a vast and shadowy sphere; 
The sun's unclouded orb 
Rolled through the black con- 
cave; 
Its rays of rapid light 
Parted around the chariot's swifter 
course. 
And fell, like ocean's feathery spray 
Dashed from the boiling surge 
Before a vessel's prow. 

The magic car moved on. 
Earth's distant orb appeared 
The smallest light that twinkles in the 
heaven; 
Whilst round the chariot's way 
Innumerable systems rolled. 
And countless spheres diffused 
An ever-varying glory. 
It was a sight of wonder : some 
Were horned like the crescent moon; 
Some shed a mild and silver beam 
Like Hesperus o'er the western sea: 
Some dashed athwart with trains of 

flame. 
Like worlds to death and ruin driven; 
Some shone like suns, and, as the chariot 
past. 
Eclipsed all other light. 

Spirit of Nature ! here ! 
In this interminable wilderness 
Of worlds, at whose immensity 
Even soaring fancy staggers. 
Here is thy fitting temple. 
Yet not the lightest leaf 
That quivers to the passing breeze 
Is less instinct with thee : 
Yet not the meanest worm 
That lurks in graves and fattens on the 
dead 
Less shares thy eternal breath. 

Spirit of Nature ! thou ! 
Imperishable as this scene, 
Here is thy fitting temple. 



QUEEN MAB. 



31 



II. 



If solitude hath ever led thy steps 
To the wild ocean's echoing shore, 
And thou hast lingered there, 
Until the sun's broad orb 
Seemed resting on the burnished 
wave, 
Thou must have marked the lines 
Of purple gold, that motionless 

Hung o'er the sinking sphere: 
Thou must have marked the billowy 

clouds 
Edged with intolerable radiancy 
Towering like rocks of jet 
Crowned with a diamond wreath. 
And yet there is a moment, 
When the sun's highest point 
Peeps like a star o'er ocean's western 

edge, 
When those far clouds of feathery gold, 
Shaded with deepest purple, gleam 
Like islands on a dark blue sea; 
Then has thy fancy soared above the 
earth, 
And furled its wearied wing 
Within the Fairy's fane. 



Yet not the golden islands 
Gleaming in yon flood of light. 

Nor the feathery curtains 
Stretching o'er the sun's bright 

couch, 
Nor the burnished ocean waves 
Paving that gorgeous dome, 
So fair, so wonderful a sight 
As Mab's ethereal palace could afford. 
Yet likest evening's vault, that faery 

Hall ! 
As Heaven, low resting on the wave, it 
spread 
Its floors of flashing light, 
Its vast and azure dome, 
Its fertile golden islands 
Floating on a silver sea; 
Whilst suns their mingling beamings 

darted 
Through clouds of circumambient dark- 
ness, 
And pearly battlements around 
Looked o'er the immense of Heaven. 



The magic car no longer moved. 
The Fairy and the Spirit 
Entered the Hall of Spells: 
Those golden clouds 
That rolled in glittering billows 
Beneath the azure canopy 
With the ethereal footsteps trembled not : 

The light and crimson mists. 
Floating to strains of thrilling melody 
Through that unearthly dwelling, 
Yielded to every movement of the will. 
Upon their passive swell the Spirit 

leaned. 
And, for the varied bliss that pressed 
around. 
Used not the glorious privilege 
Of virtue and of wisdom. 

Spirit ! the Fairy said, 
And pointed to the gorgeous dome, 
This is a wondrous sight 
And mocks all human grandeur; 
But, were it virtue's only meed to dwell 
In a celestial palace, all resigned 
To pleasurable impulses, immured 
Within the prison of itself, the will 
Of changeless nature would be unful- 
filled. 
Learn to make others happy. Spirit, 

come ! 
This is thine high reward: — the past 

shall rise; 
Thou shalt behold the present; I will 
teach 
The secrets of the future. 

The Fairy and the Spirit 
Approached the overhanging battle- 
ment. — 
Below lay stretched the universe ! 
There, far as the remotest line 
That bounds imagination's flight, 

Countless and unending orbs 
In mazy motion intermingled, 
Yet still fulfilled immutably 
Eternal nature's law. 
Above, below, around 
The circling systems formed 
A wilderness of harmony; 
Each with undeviating aim, 
In eloquent silence, through the depths 
of space 
Pursued its wondrous way. 



32 



QUEEN MAB. 



There was a little light 
That twinkled in the misty distance : 

None but a spirit's eye 

Might ken that rolling orb; 

None but a spirit's eye, 

And in no other place 
But that celestial dwelling, might behold 
Each action of this earth's inhabitants. 

But matter, space and time 
In those aerial mansions cease to act; 
And all-prevailing wisdom, when it reaps 
The harvest of its excellence, o'erbounds 
Those obstacles, of which an earthly soul 
Fears to attempt the conquest. 

The Fairy pointed to the earth. 
The Spirit's intellectual eye 
Its kindred beings recognized. 
The thronging thousands, to a passing 
view, 
Seemed like an anthill's citizens. 
How wonderful ! that even 
The passions, prejudices, interests, 
That sway the meanest being, the weak 
touch 
That moves the finest nerve, 
And in one human brain 
Causes the faintest thought, becomes a 
link 
In the great chain of nature. 

Behold, the Fairy cried, 
Palmyra's ruined palaces ! — 

Behold \ where grandeur frowned; 

Behold! where pleasure smiled; 
What now remains? — the memory 

Of senselessness and shame — 

What is immortal there? 

Nothing — it stands to tell 

A melancholy tale, to give 

An awful warning: soon 
Oblivion will steal silently 

The remnant of its fame. 

Monarchs and conquerors there 
Proud o'er prostrate millions trod — 
The earthquakes of the human race; 
Like them, forgotten when the ruin 

That marks their shock is past. 

Beside the eternal Nile, 
The Pyramids have risen. 
Nile shall pursue his changeless way: 
Those pyramids shall fall; 



Yea ! not a stone shall stand to tell 
The spot whereon they stood ! 

Their very site shall be forgotten, 
As is their builder's name ! 

Behold yon sterile spot; 
Where now the wandering Arab's tent 

Flaps in the desert-blast. 
There once old Salem's haughty fane 
Reared high to heaven its thousand 
golden domes, 
And in the blushing face of day 
Exposed its shameful glory. 
Oh ! many a widow, many an orphan 

cursed 
The building of that fane; and many a 

father. 
Worn out with toil and slavery, implored 
The poor man's God to sweep it from 

the earth, 
And spare his children the detested task 
Of piling stone on stone, and poisoning 
The choicest days of life. 
To soothe a dotard's vanity. 
There an inhuman and uncultured race 
Howled hideous praises to their Demon- 
God; 
They rushed to war, tore from the 

mother's womb 
The unborn child, — old age and infancy 
Promiscuous perished; their victorious 

arms 
Left not a soul to breathe. Oh ! they 

were fiends: 
But what was he who taught them that 

the God 
Of nature and benevolence hath given 
A special sanction to the trade of 

blood? 
His name and theirs are fading, and the 

tales 
Of this barbarian nation, which impos- 
ture 
Recites till terror credits, are pursuing 
Itself into forgetfulness. 
W^here Athens, Rome, and Sparta 

stood. 
There is a moral desert now : 
The mean and miserable huts, 
The yet more wretched palaces, 
Contrasted with those ancient fanes. 
Now crumbling to oblivion; 
The long and lonely colonnades, 



QUEEN MAS. 



33 



Through which the ghost of Freedom 
stalks, 
Seem like a well-known tune, 
Which, in some dear scene we have 
loved to hear, 
Remembered now in sadness. 
But, oh ! how much more changed, 
How gloomier is the contrast 
Of human nature there ! 
Where Socrates expired, a tyrant's slave, 
A coward and a fool, spreads death 
around — 
Then, shuddering, meets his own. 
Where Cicero and Antoninus lived, 
A cowled and hypocritical monk 
Prays, curses and deceives. 



Spirit ! ten thousand years 

Have scarcely passed away, 

Since, in the waste where now the 

savage drinks 
His enemy's blood, and aping Europe's 
sons. 
Wakes the unholy song of war. 
Arose a stately city. 
Metropolis of the western continent : 

There, now, the mossy column-stone. 
Indented by time's unrelaxing grasp. 
Which once appeared to brave 
All, save its country's ruin; 
There the wide forest scene. 
Rude in the uncultivated loveliness 

Of gardens long run wild. 
Seems, to the unwilling sojourner, whose 
steps 
Chance in that desert has delayed. 
Thus to have stood since earth was what 
it is. 
Yet once it was the busiest haunt. 
Whither, as to a common centre, flocked 
Strangers, and ships, and merchan- 
dise: 
Once peace and freedom blest 
The cultivated plain : 
But wealth, that curse of man, 
Blighted the bud of its prosperity: 
Virtue and wisdom, truth and liberty, 
Fled, to return not, until man shall 
know 
That they alone can give the bliss 

Worthy a soul that claims 
Its kindred with eternity. 



There's not one atom of yon earth 

But once was living man; 
Nor the minutest drop of rain. 
That hangeth in its thinnest cloud, 
But flowed in human veins : 
And from the burning plains 
Where Libyan monsters yell, 
From the most gloomy glens 
Of Greenland's sunless clime, 
To where the golden fields 
Of fertile England spread 
Their harvest to the day. 
Thou canst not find one spot 
Whereon no city stood. 



How strange is human pride ! 
I tell thee that those living things. 
To whom the fragile blade of grass, 
That springeth in the morn 
And perisheth ere noon, 
Is an unbounded world; 
I tell thee that those viewless beings. 
Whose mansion is the smallest particle 
Of the impassive atmosphere. 
Think, feel and live like man; 
That their affections and antipathies, 
Like his, produce the laws 
Ruling their moral state; 
And the minutest throb 
That through their frame diffuses 
The slightest, faintest motion, 
Is fixed and indispensable 
As the majestic laws 
That rule yon rolling orbs. 



The Fairy paused. The Spirit, 
In ecstasy of admiration, felt 
All knowledge of the past revived; the 
events 
Of old and wondrous times. 
Which dim tradition interruptedly 
Teaches the credulous vulgar, were un- 
folded 
In just perspective to the view; 
Yet dim from their infinitude. 
The Spirit seemed to stand 
High on an isolated pinnacle; 
The flood of ages combating below, 
The depth of the unbounded universe 
Above, and all around 
Nature's unchanging harmony. 



34 



QUEEN MAB. 



III. 

Fairy ! the Spirit said, 
And on the Queen of spells 
Fixed her ethereal eyes, 
I thank thee. Thou hast given 
A boon which I will not resign, and 

taught 
A lesson not to be unlearned. I know 
The past, and thence I will essay to 

glean 
A warning for the future, so that man 
May profit by his errors, and derive 
Experience from his folly: 
For, when the power of imparting joy 
Is equal to the will, the human soul 
Requires no other heaven. 

MAB. 

Turn thee, surpassing Spirit ! 
Much yet remains unscanned. 
Thou knowest how great is 

man. 
Thou knowest his imbecility : 
Yet learn thou what he is; 
Yet learn the lofty destiny 
Which restless time prepares 
For every living soul. 

Behold a gorgeous palace, that, amid 
Yon populous city, rears its thousand 

towers 
And seems itself a city. Gloomy troops 
Of sentinels, in stern and silent ranks. 
Encompass it around ; the dweller there 
Cannot be free and happy ; hearest thou 

not 
The curses of the fatherless, the groans 
Of those who have no friend ? He 

passes on : 
The King, the wearer of a gilded chain 
That binds his soul to abjectness, the fool 
"Whom courtiers nickname monarch, 

whilst a slave 
Even to the basest appetites — that man 
Heeds not the shriek of penury ; he 

smiles 
At the deep curses which the destitute 
Mutter in secret, and a sullen joy 
Pervades his bloodless heart when thou- 
sands groan 



But for those morsels which his wanton- 
ness 
Wastes in unjoyous revelry, to save 
All that they love from famine : when he 

hears 
The tale of horror, to some ready-made 

face 
Of hypocritical assent he turns, 
Smothering the glow of shame, that, 

spite of him, 
Flushes his bloated cheek. 

Now to the meal 
Of silence, grandeur, and excess, he drags 
His palled unwilling appetite. If gold. 
Gleaming around, and numerous viands 

culled 
From every clime, could force the loath- 
ing sense 
To overcome satiety, — if wealth 
The spring it draws from poisons not, — 

or vice. 
Unfeeling, stubborn vice, converteth not 
Its food to deadliest venom ; then that 

king 
Is happy ; and the peasant who fulfils 
His unforced task, when he returns at 

even 
And by the blazing fagot meets again 
Her welcome for whom all his toil is 

sped. 
Tastes not a sweeter meal. 

Behold him now 
Stretched on the gorgeous couch ; his 

fevered brain 
Reels dizzily awhile ; but ah ! too soon 
The slumber of intemperance subsides. 
And conscience, that undying serpent, 

calls 
Her venomous brood to their nocturnal 

task. 
Listen ! he speaks ! oh ! mark that fren- 
zied eye — 
Oh ! mark that deadly visage. 

KING. 

No cessation ! 
Oh ! must this last forever ! Awful death, 
I wish, yet fear to clasp thee ! — Not 

one moment 
Of dreamless sleep ! O dear and blessed 

peace ! 
Why dost thou shroud thy vestal purity 



QUEEN MAS. 



35 



In penury and dungeons ? wherefore 

lurkest 
With danger, death, and solitude ; yet 

shun'st 
The palace I have built thee ? Sacred 

peace ! 
Oh visit me but once, but pitying shed 
One drop of balm upon my withered 

soul. 

Vain man! that palace is the virtuous 

heart. 
And peace defileth not her snowy robes 
In such a shed as thine. Hark ! yet he 

mutters ; 
His slumbers are but varied agonies, 
They prey like scorpions on the springs 

of life. 
There needeth not the hell that bigots 

frame 
To punish those who err ; earth in itself 
Contains at once the evil and the cure ; 
And all-sufificing nature can chastise 
Those who trangress her law, — she only 

knows 
How justly to proportion to the fault 
The punishment it merits. 

Is it strange 
That this poor wretch should pride him 

in his woe ? 
Take pleasure in his abjectness, and hug 
The scorpion that consumes him ? Is 

it strange 
That, placed on a conspicuous throne of 

thorns, 
Grasping an iron sceptre, and immured 
Within a splendid prison, whose stern 

bounds 
Shut him from all that's good or dear on 

earth. 
His soul asserts not its humanity ? 
That man's mild nature rises not in war 
Against a king's employ ? No — 't is 

not strange. 
He, like the vulgar, thinks, feels, acts 

and lives 
Just as his father did ; the unconquered 

powers 
Of precedent and custom interpose 
Between a king and virtue. Stranger 

yet. 
To those who know not nature, nor 

deduce 



The future from the present, it may seem, 
That not one slave, who suffers from 

the crimes 
Of this unnatural being ; not one wretch, 
Whose children famish, and whose nup- 
tial bed 
Is earth's unpitying bosom, rears an arm 
To dash him from his throne ! 

Those gilded flies 
That, basking in the sunshine of a court, 
Fatten on its corruption ! — what are 

they ? 
— The drones of the community ; they 

feed 
On the mechanic's labor : the starved 

hind 
For them compels the stubborn glebe to 

yield 
Its unshared harvests ; and yon squalid 

form. 
Leaner than fleshless misery, that wastes 
A sunless life in the unwholesome mine, 
Drags out in labor a protracted death. 
To glut their grandeur ; many faint with 

toil. 
That few may know the cares and woe 

of sloth. 

Whence think'st thou, kings and para- 
sites arose ? 
Whence that unnatural line of drones 

who heap 
Toil and unvanquishable penury 
On those who build their palaces, and 

♦ bring 
Their daily bread? — From vice, black 

loathsome vice ; 
From rapine, madness, treachery, and 

wrong ; 
From all that genders misery, and makes 
Of earth this thorny wilderness; from 

lust, 
Revenge, and murder. . . . And when 

reason's voice, 
Loud as the voice of nature, shall have 

waked 
The nations ; and mankind perceive that 

vice 
Is discord, war, and misery ; that virtue 
Is peace, and happiness and harmony ; 
When man's maturer nature shall disdain 
The playthings of its childhood ; — kingly 

glare 



36 



QUEEN MAB. 



Will lose its power to dazzle ; its au- 
thority 
Will silently pass by ; the gorgeous 

throne 
Shall stand unnoticed in the regal hall, 
Fast falling to decay; whilst falsehood's 

trade 
Shall be as hateful and unprofitable 
As that of truth is now. 

Where is the fame 
Which the vainglorious mighty of the 

earth 
Seek to eternize? Oh ! the faintest sound 
From time's light footfall, the minutest 

wave 
That swells the flood of ages, whelms in 

nothing 
The unsubstantial bubble. Ay ! to-day 
Stern is the tyrant's mandate, red the 

gaze 
That flashes desolation, strong the arm 
That scatters multitudes. To-morrow 

comes ! 
That mandate is a thunder-peal that died 
In ages past; that gaze, a transient flash 
On which the midnight closed, and on 

that arm 
The worm has made his meal. 

The virtuous man. 
Who, great in his humility, as kings 
Are little in their grandeur; he who leads 
Invincibly a life of resolute good, 
And stands amid the silent dungeon- 
depths 
More free and fearless than the t^^m- 

bling judge, 
Who, clothed in venal power, vainly 

strove 
To bind the impassive spirit; when he 

falls. 
His mild eye beams benevolence no 

more: 
Withered the hand outstretched but to 

relieve; 
Sunk reason's simple eloquence, that 

rolled 
But to appal the guilty. Yes ! the grave 
Hath quenched that eye, and death's 

relentless frost 
Withered that arm: but the unfading 

fame 
Which virtue hangs upon its votary's 

tomb; 



The deathless memory of that man^ 

whom kings 
Call to their mind and tremble; the 

remembrance 
With which the happy spirit contemplates 
Its well-spent pilgrimage on earth. 
Shall never pass away. 

Nature rejects the monarch, not the man; 

The subject, not the citizen : for kings 

And subjects, mutual foes, forever play 

A losing game into each other's hands, 

Whose stakes are vice and misery. The 
man 

Of virtuous soul commands not, nor 
obeys. 

Power, like a desolating pestilence, 

Pollutes whate'er it touches; and obe- 
dience, 

Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, 
truth, 

Makes slaves of men, and, of the human 
frame, 

A mechanized automaton. 

When Nero, 

High over flaming Rome, with savage 
joy 

Lowered like a fiend, drank with en- 
raptured ear 

The shrieks of agonizing death, beheld 

The frightful desolation spread, and felt 

A new created sense within his soul 

Thrill to the sight, and vibrate to the 
sound ; 

Think'st thou his grandeur had not over- 
come 

The force of human kindness? and, when 
Rome, 

With one stern blow, hurled not the 
tyrant down, 

Crushed not the arm red with her dearest 
blood, 

Had not submissive abjectness destroyed 

Nature's suggestions? 

Look on yonder earth : 

The golden harvests spring; the unfail- 
ing sun 

Sheds light and life; the fruits, the 
flowers, the trees, 

Arise in due succession; all things speak 

Peace, harmony, and love. The uni« 
verse, 

In nature's silent eloquence, declares 



QUEEN MAB. 



37 



That all fulfil the works of love and joy — 
All but the outcast man. He fabricates 
The sword which stabs his peace; he 

cherisheth 
The snakes that gnaw his heart; he 

raiseth up 
The tyrant, whose delight is in his woe, 
Whose sport is in his agony. Yon sun. 
Lights it the great alone? Yon silver 

beams, 
Sleep they less sweetly on the cottage 

thatch 
Than on the dome of kings? Is mother 

earth 
A step-dame to her numerous sons, who 

earn 
Her unshared gifts with unremitting toil; 
A mother only to those puling babes 
Who, nursed in ease and luxury, make 

men 
The playthings of their babyhood, and 

mar. 
In self-important childishness, that peace 
Which men alone appreciate? 

Spirit of Nature ! no. 
The pure diffusion of thy essence throbs 
Alike in every human heart. 

Thou aye erectest there 
Thy throne of power unappealable : 
Thou art the judge beneath whose nod 
Man's brief and frail authority 

Is powerless as the wind 

That passeth idly by. 
Thine the tribunal which surpasseth 
The show of human justice, 

As God surpasses man. 

Spirit of Nature ! thou 
Life of interminable multitudes; 
Soul of those mighty spheres 
Whose changeless paths thro' Heaven's 
deep silence lie; 
Soul of that smallest being, 

The dwelling of whose life 
Is one faint April sun-gleam; — 
Man, like these passive things. 
Thy will unconsciously fulfilleth : 

Like theirs, his age of endless peace. 
Which time is fast maturing. 
Will swiftly, surely come; 
And the unbounded frame, which thou 
pervadest, 



Will be without a flaw 
Marring its perfect symmetry. 

IV. 

How beautiful this night ! the balmiest 

sigh, 

Which vernal zephyrs breathe in even- 
ing's ear, 

Were discord to the speaking quietude 

That wraps this moveless scene. Heaven's 
ebon vault. 

Studded with stars unutterably bright, 

Through which the moon's unclouded 
grandeur rolls, 

Seems like a canopy which love had 
spread 

To curtain her sleeping world. Yon 
gentle hills, 

Robed in a garment of untrodden snow; 

Yon darksome rocks, whence icicles 
depend. 

So stainless, that their white and glitter- 
ing spires 

Tinge not the moon's pure beam; yon 
castled steep, 

Whose banner hangeth o'er the time- 
worn tower 

So idly, that rapt fancy deemeth it 

A metaphor of peace; — all form a scene 

Where musing solitude might love to lift 

Her soul above this sphere of earthli- 
ness; 

Where silence undisturbed might watch 
alone, 

So cold, so bright, so still. 

The orb of day, 

In southern climes, o'er ocean's waveless 
field 

Sinks sweetly smiling: not the faintest 
breath 

Steals o'er the unruffled deep; the clouds 
of eve 

Reflect unmoved the lingering beam of 
day; 

And vesper's image on the western main 

Is beautifully still. To-morrow comes: 

Cloud upon cloud, in dark and deepen- 
ing mass, 

Roll o'er the blackened waters; the 
deep roar 

Of distant thunder mutters awfully; 



38 



QUEEN MAB. 



Tempest unfolds its pinion o'er the 

gloom 
That shrouds the boiling surge; the 

pitiless fiend, 
With all his winds and lightnings, tracks 

his prey; 
The torn deep yawns, — the vessel finds 

a grave 
Beneath its jagged gulph. 

Ah ! whence yon glare 
That fires the arch of heaven? — that 

dark red smoke 
Blotting the silver moon? The stars are 

quenched 
In darkness, and the pure and spangling 

snow 
Gleams faintly through the gloom that 

gathers round ! 
Hark to that roar, whose swift and 

deafening peals 
In countless echoes through the moun- 
tains ring, 
Startling pale midnight on her starry 

throne ! 
Now swells the intermingling din; the 

jar 
Frequent and frightful of the bursting 

bomb; 
The falling beam, the shriek, the groan, 

the shout, 
The ceaseless clangor, and the rush of 

men 
Inebriate with rage: — loud, and more 

loud 
The discord grows; till pale death shuts 

the scene. 
And o'er the conqueror and the con- 
quered draws 
His cold and bloody shroud. — Of all 

the men 
Whom day's departing beam saw bloom- 
ing there, 
In proud and vigorous health; of all the 

hearts 
That beat with anxious life at sunset 

there; 
How few survive, how few are beating 

now ! 
All is deep silence, like the fearful calm 
That slumbers in the storm's portentous 

pause; 
Save when the frantic wail of widowed 

love 



Comes shuddering on the blast, or th< 

faint moan 
With which some soul bursts from the 

frame of clay 
Wrapt round its struggling powers. 

The gray morr 
Dawns on the mournful scene; the sulr 

phurous smoke 
Before the icy wind slow rolls away, 
And the bright beams of frosty morning 

dance 
Along the spangling snow. There 

tracks of blood 
Even to the forest's depth, and scattere(^ 

arms. 
And lifeless warriors, whose hard linea^ 

ments 
Death's self could change not, mark the 

dreadful path 
Of the outsallying victors: far behind, 
Black ashes note where their proud city 

stood. 
Within yon forest is a gloomy glen — 
Each tree which guards its darkness 

from the day 
Waves o'er a warrior's tomb. 

I see thee shrink. 
Surpassing Spirit ! — wert thou human 

else? 
I see a shade of doubt and horror fleet 
Across thy stainless features : yet fear not; 
This is no vmconnected misery. 
Nor stands uncaused, and irretrievable. 
Man's evil nature, that apology 
Which kings who rule, and cowards who 

crouch, set up 
For their unnumbered crimes, sheds not 

the blood 
Which desolates the discord-wasted land. 
From kings, and priests, and statesmen, 

war arose. 
Whose safety is man's deep unbettered 

woe, 
Whose grandeur his debasement. Let 

the axe 
Strike at the root, the poison-tree will 

fall ; 
And where its venomed exhalations 

spread 
Ruin, and death, and woe, where mil- 
lions lay 
Quenching the serpent's famine, and 

their bones 



QUEEN MAB. 



39 



Bleaching unburied in the putrid blast, 
A garden shall arise, in loveliness 
Surpassing fabled Eden. 

Hath Nature's soul, 
That formed this world so beautiful, 

that spread 
Earth's lap with plenty, and life's small- 
est chord 
Strung to unchanging unison, that gave 
The happy birds their dwelling in the 

grove, 
That yielded to the wanderers of the deep 
The lovely silence of the unfathomed 

main, 
And filled the meanest worm that crawls 

in dust 
With spirit, thought, and love; on Man 

alone, 
Partial in causeless malice, wantonly 
Heaped ruin, vice, and slavery; his soul 
Blasted with withering curses; placed 

afar 
The meteor-happiness, that shuns his 

grasp. 
But serving on the frightful gulph to 

glare, 
Rent wide beneath his footsteps? 

Nature ! — no ! 
Kings, priests, and statesmen, blast the 

human flower 
Even in its tender bud; their influence 

darts 
Like subtle poison through the bloodless 

veins 
Of desolate society. The child. 
Ere he can lisp his mother's sacred name, 
Swells with the unnatural pride of crime, 

and lifts 
His baby-sword even in a hero's mood. 
This infant-arm becomes the bloodiest 

scourge 
Of devastated earth; whilst specious 

names. 
Learnt in soft childhood's unsuspecting 

hour. 
Serve as the sophisms with which man- 
hood dims 
Bright reason's ray, and sanctifies the 

sword 
Upraised to shed a brother's innocent 

blood. 
Let priest-led slaves cease to proclaim 

that man 



Inherits vice and misery, when force 
And falsehood hang even o'er the 

cradled babe. 
Stifling with rudest grasp all natural good. 

Ah ! to the stranger-soul, when first it 

peeps 
From its new tenement, and looks 

abroad 
For happiness and sympathy, how stern 
And desolate a tract is this wide world ! 
How withered all the buds of natural 

good ! 
No shade, no shelter from the sweeping 

storms 
Of pitiless power ! On its wretched 

frame. 
Poisoned, perchance, by the disease 

and woe 
Heaped on the wretched parent whence 

it sprung 
By morals, law, and custom, the pure 

winds 
Of heaven, that renovate the insect 

tribes 
May breathe not. The untainting light 

of day 
May visit not its longings. It is bound 
Ere it has life; yea, all the chains are 

forged 
Long ere its being : all liberty and love 
And peace is torn from its defenceless- 

ness; 
Cursed from its birth, even from its cra- 
dle doomed 
To abjectness and bondage ! 

Throughout this varied and eternal world 
Soul is the only element: the block 
That for uncounted ages has remained 
The moveless pillar of a mountain's 

weight 
Is active, living spirit. Every grain 
Is sentient both in unity and part, 
And the minutest atom comprehends 
A world of loves and hatreds; these 

beget 
Evil and good: hence truth and false- 
hood spring; 
Hence will and thought and action, all 

the germs 
Of pain or pleasure, sympathy or hate, 
That variegate the eternal universe. 



40 



QUEEN MAB. 



Soul is not more polluted than the beams 
Of heaven's pure orb, ere round their 

rapid lines 
The taint of earth-born atmospheres arise. 

Man is of soul and body, formed for 

deeds 
Of high resolve, on fancy's boldest wing 
To soar unwearied, fearlessly to turn 
The keenest pangs to peacefulness, and 

taste 
The joys which mingled sense and spirit 

yield. 
Or he is formed for abjectness and woe. 
To grovel on the dunghill of his fears, 
To shrink at every sound, to quench the 

flame 
Of natural love in sensualism, to know 
That hour as blest when on his worthless 

days 
The frozen hand of death shall set its 

seal. 
Yet fear the cure, though hating the dis- 
ease. 
The one is man that shall hereafter be; 
The other, man as vice has made him 

now. 

War is the statesman's game, the priest's 

delight. 
The lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's 

trade, 
And, to those royal miirderers, whose 

mean thrones 
Are bought by crimes of treachery and 

gore. 
The bread they eat, the staff on which 

they lean. 
Guards, garbed in blood-red livery, sur- 
round 
Their palaces, participate the crimes 
That force defends, and from a nation's 

rage 
Secure the crown, which all the curses 

reach 
Thajt famine, frenzy, woe and penury 

breathe. 
These are the hired bravos who defend 
The tyrant's throne — the bullies of his 

fear: 
These are the sinks and channels of worst 

vice. 
The refuse of society, the dregs 



Of all that is most vile : their cold hearts 

blend 
Deceit with sternness, ignorance with 

pride, 
All that is mean and villanous with rage 
Which hopelessness of good, and self- 
contempt, 
Alone might kindle; they are decked in 

wealth. 
Honor and power, then are sent abroad 
To do their work. The pestilence that 

stalks 
In gloomy triumph through some eastern 

land 
Is less destroying. They cajole with 

gold. 
And promises of fame, the thoughtless 

youth 
Already crushed with servitude; he knows 
His wretchedness too late, and cherishes 
Repentance for his ruin, when his doom 
Is sealed in gold and blood ! 
Those too the tyrant serve, who, skilled 

to snare 
The feet of justice in the toils of law, 
Stand, ready to oppress the weaker still; 
And right or wrong will vindicate for gold, 
Sneering at public virtue, which beneath 
Their pitiless tread lies torn and trampled, 

where 
Honor sits smiling at the sale of truth. 

Then grave and hoary-headed hypocrites. 
Without a hope, a passion, or a love, 
Who, through a life of luxury and lies, 
Have crept by flattery to the seats of 

power. 
Support the system whence their honors 

flow. . . . 
They have three words : — well tyrants 

know their use. 
Well pay them for the loan, with usury 
Torn from a bleeding world ! — God, 

Hell, and Heaven. 
A vengeful, pitiless, and almighty fiend, 
Whose mercy is a nickname for the rage 
Of tameless tigers hungering for blood. 
Hell, a red gulph of everlasting fire. 
Where poisonous and undying worms 

prolong 
Eternal misery to those hapless slaves 
Whose life has been a penance for its 

crimes. 



QUEEN MAB. 



41 



And Heaven, a meed for those who dare 

belie 
Their human nature, quake, beheve, and 

cringe 
Before the mockeries of earthly power. 

These tools the tyrant tempers to his 

work. 
Wields in his wrath, and as he wills 

destroys, 
Omnipotent in wickedness : the while 
Youth springs, age moulders, manhood 

tamely does 
His bidding, bribed by short-lived joys 

to lend 
Force to the weakness of his trembling 

arm. 

They rise, they fall; one generation 

comes 
Yielding its harvest to destruction's 

scythe. 
It fades, another blossoms: yet behold ! 
Red glows the tyrant's stamp-mark on 

its bloom, 
Withering and cankering deep its passive 

prime. 
He has invented lying words and modes. 
Empty and vain as his own coreless 

heart; 
Evasive meanings, nothings of much 

sound, 
To lure the heedless victim to the toils 
Spread round the valley of its paradise. 

Look to thyself, priest, conqueror, or 



prmce 



Whether thy trade is falsehood, and thy 

lusts 
Deep wallow in the earnings of the poor. 
With whom thy master was : — or thou 

delight'st 
In numbering o'er the myriads of thy 

slain. 
All misery weighing nothing in the scale 
Against thy short-lived fame; or thou 

dost load 
With cowardice and crime the groaning 

land, 
A pomp-fed king. Look to thy wretched 

self! 
Ay, art thou not the veriest slave that 

e'er 



Crawled on the loathing earth? Are not 
thy days 

Days of unsatisfying listlessness? 

Dost thou not cry, ere night's long rack 
is o'er. 

When will the morning come? Is not 
thy youth 

A vain and feverish dream of sensualism ? 

Thy manhood blighted with unripe dis- 
ease? 

Are not thy views of unregretted death 

Drear, comfortless, and horrible? Thy 
mind. 

Is it not morbid as thy nerveless frame, 

Incapable of judgment, hope, or love? 

And dost thou wish the errors to survive 

That bar thee from all sympathies of 
good, 

After the miserable interest 

Thou hold'st in their protraction? When 
the grave 

Has swallowed up thy memory and thy- 
self. 

Dost thou desire the bane that poisons 
earth 

To twine its roots around thy coffined 
clay. 

Spring from thy bones, and blossom on 
thy tomb, 

That of its fruit thy babes may eat and 
die? 



V. 



Thus do the generations of the earth 
Go to the grave, and issue from the 

womb, 
Surviving still the imperishable change 
That renovates the world; even as the 

leaves 
Which the keen frost- wind of the wan- 
ing year 
Has scattered on the forest soil, and 

heaped 
For many seasons there, though long 

they choke. 
Loading with loathsome rottenness the 

land. 
All germs of promise, yet when the tall 

trees 
From which they fell, shorn of their 

lovely shapes, 



42 



QUEEN MAB. 



Lie level with the earth to moulder 

there, 
They fertilize the land they long de- 
formed, 
Till from the breathing lawn a forest 

springs 
Of youth, integrity, and loveliness, 
Like that which gave it life, to spring 

and die. 
Thus suicidal selfishness, that blights 
The fairest feelings of the opening heart, 
Is destined to decay, whilst from the soil 
Shall spring all virtue, all delight, all 

love, 
And judgment cease to wage unnatural 

war 
With passion's unsubduable array. 
Twin-sister of religion, selfishness ! 
Rival in crime and falsehood, aping all 
The wanton horrors of her bloody play; 
Yet frozen, unimpassioned, spiritless. 
Shunning the light, and owning not its 

name. 
Compelled, by its deformity, to screen 
With flimsy veil of justice and of right. 
Its unattractive lineaments, that scare 
All, save the brood of ignorance : at 

once 
The cause and the effect of tyranny; 
Unblushing, hardened, sensual, and 

vile; 
Dead to all love but of its abjectness. 
With heart impassive by more noble 

powers 
Than unsha4ed pleasure, sordid gain, or 

fame; 
Despising its own miserable being, 
Which still it longs, yet fears to dis- 
enthrall. 

Hence commerce springs, the venal 
interchange 

Of all that human art or nature yield; 

Which wealth should purchase not, but 
want demand, 

And natural kindness hasten to supply 

From the full fountain of its boundless 
love. 

Forever stifled, drained, and tainted now. 

Commerce ! beneath whose poison- 
breathing shade 

No solitary virtue dares to spring. 

But poverty and wealth with equal hand 



Scatter their withering curses, and unfold 
The doors of premature and violent 

death, 
To pining famine and full-fed disease, 
To all that shares the lot of human life, 
Which poisoned, body and soul, scarce 

drags the chain. 
That lengthens as it goes and clanks 

behind. 

Commerce has set the mark of selfish- 
ness, 
The signet of its all-enslaving power 
Upon a shining ore, and called it gold : 
Before whose image bow the vulgar 

great. 
The vainly rich, the miserable proud. 
The mob of peasants, nobles, priests, 

and kings. 
And with blind feelings reverence the 

power 
That grinds them to the dust of misery. 
But in the temple of their hireling hearts 
Gold is a living god, and rules in scorn 
All earthly things but virtue. 

Since tyrants, by the sale of human life. 
Heap luxuries to their sensualism, and 

fame 
To their wide-wasting and insatiate pride, 
Success has sanctioned to a credulous 

world 
The ruin, the disgrace, the woe of war. 
His hosts of blind and unresisting dupes 
The despot numbers; from his cabinet 
These puppets of his schemes he moves 

at will. 
Even as the slaves by force or famine 

driven. 
Beneath a vulgar master, to perform 
A task of cold and brutal drudgery; — 
Hardened to hope, insensible to fear. 
Scarce living pulleys of a dead machine. 
Mere wheels of work and articles of 

trade, 
That grace the proud and noisy pomp of 

wealth ! 

The harmony and happiness of man 
Yields to the wealth of nations; that 

which lifts 
His nature to the heaven of its pride 
Is bartered for the poison of his soul ; 



QUEEN MAB. 



43 



The weight that drags to earth his tower- 
ing hopes, 
Blighting all prospect but of selfish gain, 
Withering all passion but of slavish fear, 
Extinguishing all free and generous love 
Of enterprise and daring, even the pulse 
That fancy kindles in the beating heart 
To mingle with sensation, it destroys, — 
Leaves nothing but the sordid lust of 

self, 
The grovelling hope of interest and gold, 
Unqualified, unmingled, unredeemed 
Even by hypocrisy. 

And statesmen boast 
Of wealth ! The wordy eloquence, that 

lives 
After the ruin of their hearts, can gild 
The bitter poison of a nation's woe, 
Can turn the worship of the servile mob 
To their corrupt and glaring idol fame. 
From virtue, trampled by its iron tread. 
Although its dazzling pedestal be raised 
Amid the horrors of a limb-strewn field. 
With desolated dwellings smoking round. 
The man of ease, who, by his warm fire- 
side, 
To deeds of charitable intercourse 
And bare fulfilment of the common laws 
Of decency and prejudice, confines 
The struggling nature of his human heart. 
Is duped by their cold sophistry; he 

sheds 
A passing tear perchance upon the wreck 
Of earthly peace, when near his dwell- 
ing's door 
The frightful waves are driven, — when 

his son 
Is murdered by the tyrant, or religion 
Drives his wife raving mad. But the 

poor man, 
Whose life is misery, and fear, and care; 
Whom the morn wakens but to fruitless 

toil; 
Who ever hears his famished offspring's 

scream, 
Whom their pale mother's uncomplain- 
ing gaze 
Forever meets, and the proud rich man's 

eye 
Flashing command, and the heart-break- 
ing scene 
Of thousands like himself; — he little 
heeds 



The rhetoric of tyranny; his hate 

Is quenchless as his wrongs; he laughs 

to scorn 
The vain and bitter mockery of words. 
Feeling the horror of the tyrant's deeds, 
And unrestrained but by the arm of 

power, 
That knows and dreads his enmity. 

The iron rod of penury still compels 
Her wretched slave to bow the knee to 

wealth, 
And poison, with unprofitable toil, 
A life too void of solace to confirm 
The very chains that bind him to his 

doom. 
Nature, impartial in munificence, 
Has gifted man with all-subduing will. 
Matter, with all its transitory shapes. 
Lies subjected and plastic at his feet. 
That, weak from bondage, tremble as 

they tread. 
How many a rustic Milton has passed by, 
Stifling the speechless longings of his 

heart, 
In unremitting drudgery and care ! 
How many a vulgar Cato has compelled 
His energies, no longer tameless then, 
To mould a pin, or fabricate a nail ! 
How many a Newton, to whose passive 

ken 
Those mighty spheres that gem infinity 
Were only specks of tinsel, fixed in 

heaven 
To light the midnights of his native 

town ! 

Yet every heart contains perfection's 

germ: 
The wisest of the sages of the earth. 
That ever from the stores of reason drew 
Science and truth, and virtue's dreadless 

tone. 
Were but a weak and inexperienced boy, 
Proud, sensual, unimpassioned, unim- 

bued 
With pure desire and universal love, 
Compared to that high being, of cloud- 
less brain. 
Untainted passion, elevated will, 
Which death (who even would linger 

long in awe 
Within his noble presence, and beneath 



44 



QUEEN MAB. 



His changeless eyebeam) might alone 

subdue. 
Him, every slave now dragging through 

the filth 
Of some corrupted city his sad life, 
Pining with famine, swoln with luxury, 
Bluntirig the keenness of his spiritual 

sense 
With narrow schemings and unworthy 

cares, 
Or madly rushing through all violent 

crime, 
To move the deep stagnation of his 

soul, — 
Might imitate and equal. 

But mean lust 
Has bound its chains so tight around 

the earth. 
That all within it but the virtuous man 
Is venal : gold or fame will surely reach 
The price prefixed by selfishness, to all 
But him of resolute and unchanging 

will; 
Whom, nor the plaudits of a servile 

crowd, 
Nor the vile joys of tainting luxury, 
Can bribe to yield his elevated soul 
To tyranny or falsehood, though they 

wield 
With blood-red hand the sceptre of the 

world. 

All things are sold : the very light of 

heaven 
Is venal; earth's unsparing gifts of love, 
The smallest and most despicable things 
That lurk in the abysses of the deep, 
All objects of our life, even life itself, 
And the poor pittance which the laws 

allow 
Of liberty, the fellowship of man. 
Those duties which his heart of human 

love 
Should urge him to perform instinctively, 
Are bought and sold as in a public mart 
Of undisguising selfishness, that sets 
On each its price, the stamp-mark of 

her reign. 
Even love is sold; the solace of all woe 
Is turned to deadliest agony, old age 
Shivers in selfish beauty's loathing arms, 
And youth's corrupted impulses prepare 
A life of horror from the blighting bane 



Of commerce; whilst the pestilence that 

springs 
From unenjoying sensualism, has filled 
All human life with hydra-headed woes. 

Falsehood demands but gold to pay the 

pangs 
Of outraged conscience; for the slavish 

priest 
Sets no great value on his hireling faith : 
A little passing pomp, some servile souls. 
Whom cowardice itself might safely 

chain, 
Or the spare mite of avarice could bribe 
To deck the triumph of their languid zeal, 
Can make him minister to tyranny. 
More daring crime requires a loftier 

meed: 
Without a shudder, the slave-soldier 

lends 
His arm to murderous deeds, and steels 

his heart. 
When the dread eloquence of dying men, 
Low mingling on the lonely field of 

fame, 
Assails that nature, whose applause he 

sells 
For the gross blessings of a patriot mob, 
For the vile gratitude of heartless kings, 
And for a cold world's good word, — 

viler still ! 

There is a nobler glory, which survives 
Until our being fades, and solacing 
All human care, accompanies its change; 
Deserts not virtue in the dungeon's 

gloom. 
And, in the precincts of the palace, 

guides 
Its footsteps through that labyrinth of 

crime ; 
Imbues his lineaments with dauntless- 

ness. 
Even when, from power's avenging 

hand, he takes 
Its sweetest, last and noblest title — 

death; 
— The consciousness of good, which 

neither gold. 
Nor sordid fame, nor hope of heavenly 

bliss. 
Can purchase; but a life of resolute 

good. 



QUEEN MAB. 



45 



Unalterable will, quenchless desire 
Of universal happiness, the heart 
That beats with it in unison, the brain, 
Whose ever wakeful wisdom toils to 

change 
Reason's rich stores for its eternal weal. 



This commerce of sincerest virtue needs 
No mediative signs of selfishness, 
No jealous intercourse of wretched gain, 
No balancings of prudence, cold and 

long; 
In just and equal measure all is weighed. 
One scale contains the sum of human 

weal, 
And one, the good man's heart. 

How vainly seek 
The selfish for that happiness denied 
To aught but virtue ! Blind and har- 
dened, they, 
"Who hope for peace amid the storms of 

care. 
Who covet power they know not how 

to use, 
And sigh for pleasure they refuse to 

give,— 
Madly they frustrate still their own 

designs; 
And, where they hope that quiet to enjoy 
Which virtue pictures, bitterness of soul, 
Pining regrets, and vain repentances, 
Disease, disgust, and lassitude, pervade 
Their valueless and miserable lives. 



But hoary-headed selfishness has felt 
Its death-blow, and is tottering to the 

grave : 
A brighter morn awaits the human day, 
When every transfer of earth's natural 

gifts 
Shall be a commerce of good words and 

works ; 
When poverty and wealth, the thirst of 

fame. 
The fear of infamy, disease and woe, 
War with its million horrors, and fierce 

hell 
Shall live but in the memory of time. 
Who, like a penitent libertine, shall start. 
Look back, and shudder at his younger 

years. 



VI. 

All touch, all eye, all ear, 
The Spirit felt the Fairy's burning speech. 

O'er the thin texture of its frame. 
The varying periods painted changing 
glows, 
As on a summer even. 
When soul-enfolding music floats around, 
The stainless mirror of the lake 
Re-images the eastern gloom. 
Mingling convulsively its purple hues 
With sunset's burnished gold. 

Then thus the Spirit spoke: 
It is a wild and miserable world ! 

Thorny, and full of care. 
Which every fiend can make his prey at 
will. 
O Fairy ! in the lapse of years, 
Is there no hope in store ? 
Will yon vast suns roll on 
Interminably, still illuming 
The night of so many wretched souls, 
And see no hope for them ? 
Will not the universal Spirit e'er 
Revivify this withered limb of Heaven? 



The Fairy calmly smiled 
In comfort, and a kindling gleam of hope 

Suffused the Spirit's lineaments. 
Oh! rest thee tranquil; chase those fear- 
ful doubts, 
Which ne'er could rack an everlasting 

soul, 
That sees the chains which bind it to its 

doom. 
Yes ! crime and misery are in yonder 
earth. 
Falsehood, mistake, and lust; 
But the eternal world 
Contains at once the evil and the cure. 
Some eminent in virtue shall start up. 

Even in perversest time : 
The truths of their pure lips, that never 

die. 
Shall bind the scorpion falsehood with 
a wreath 
Of ever-living flame. 
Until the monster sting itself to death. 



46 



QUEEN MAB. 



How sweet a scene will earth become ! 
Of purest spirits a pure dwelling-place, 
Symphonious with the planetary spheres; 
When man, with changeless nature coa- 
lescing, 
Will undertake regeneration's work, 
When its ungenial poles no longer point 
To the red and baleful sun 
That faintly twinkles there. 

Spirit ! on yonder earth. 
Falsehood now triumphs : deadly 
power 
Has fixed its seal upon the lip of truth ! 

Madness and misery are there ! 
The happiest is most wretched ! Yet 

confide, 
Until pure health-drops, from the cup 

of joy, 
Fall like a dew of balm upon the world. 
Now, to the scene I show, in silence 

turn, 
And read the blood-stained charter of 

all woe. 
Which nature soon, with recreating hand, 
Will blot in mercy from the book of 

earth. 
How bold the flight of passion's wander- 
ing wing. 
How swift the step of reason's firmer 

tread, 
How calm and sweet the victories of life, 
How terrorless the triumph of the grave ! 
How powerless were the mightiest 

monarch's arm. 
Vain his loud threat, and impotent his 

frown ! 
How ludicrous the priest's dogmatic 

roar ! 
The weight of his exterminating curse, 
How light ! and his affected charity, 
To suit the pressure of the changing 

times, 
What palpable deceit ! — but for thy aid. 
Religion ! but for thee, prolific fiend. 
Who peoplest earth with demons, hell 

with men, 
And heaven with slaves ! 

Thou taintest all thou look'st upon ! — 

the stars, 
Which on thy cradle beamed so brightly 

sweet, 



Were gods to the distempered playful- 
ness 
Of thy untutored infancy : the trees, 
The grass, the clouds, the mountains, 

and the sea. 
All living things that walk, swim, creep, 

or fly, 
Were gods : the sun had homage, and 

the moon 
Her worshipper. Then thou becamest, 

a boy, 
More daring in thy frenzies : every 

shape, 
Monstrous or vast, or beautifully wild. 
Which, from sensation's relics, fancy 

culls ; 
The spirits of the air, the shuddering 

ghost, 
The genii of the elements, the powers 
That give a shape to nature's varied 

works, 
Had life and place in the corrupt belief 
Of thy blind heart : yet still thy youthful 

hands 
Were pure of human blood. Then man- 
hood gave 
Its strength and ardor to thy frenzied 

brain ; 
Thine eager gaze scanned the stupen- 
dous scene 
Whose wonders mocked the knowledge 

of thy pride : 
Their everlasting and unchanging laws 
Reproached thine ignorance. Awhile 

thou stood'st 
Baffled and gloomy ; then thou didst 

sum up 
The elements of all that thou didst know; 
The changing seasons, winter's leafless 

reign, 
The budding of the heaven-breathing 

trees. 
The eternal orbs that beautify the night, 
The sunrise, and the setting of the moon, 
Earthquakes and wars, and poisons and 

disease. 
And all their causes, to an abstract 

point, 
Converging, thou didst bend and called 

it God ! 
The self-sufficing, the omnipotent. 
The merciful, and the avenging God ! 
Who, prototype of human misrule, sits 



QUEEN MAB. 



47 



High in heaven's realm upon a golden 

throne, 
Even like an earthly king ; and whose 

dread work, 
Hell, gapes forever for the unhappy 

slaves 
Of fate, whom he created, in his sport, 
To triumph in their torments when they 

fell! 
Earth heard the name ; earth trembled, 

as the smoke 
Of his revenge ascended up to heaven. 
Blotting the constellations; and the cries 
Of millions, butchered in sweet confi- 
dence 
And unsuspecting peace, even when the 

bonds 
Of safety were confirmed by wordy oaths 
Sworn in his dreadful name, rung through 

the land; 
Whilst innocent babes writhed on thy 

stubborn spear. 
And thou didst laugh to hear the mother's 

shriek 
Of maniac gladness, as the sacred steel 
Felt cold in her torn entrails ! 



Religion ! thou wert then in manhood's 

prime : 
But age crept on: one God would not 

suffice 
For senile puerility; thou framedst 
A tale to suit thy dotage, and to glut 
Thy misery-thirsting soul, that the mad 

fiend 
Thy wickedness had pictured might 

afford 
A plea for sating the unnatural thirst 
For murder, rapine, violence, and crime. 
That still consumed thy being, even 

when 
Thou heard'st the step of fate; — that 

flames might light 
Thy funeral scene, and the shrill horrent 

shrieks 
Of parents dying on the pile that burned 
To light their children to thy paths, the 

roar 
Of the encircling flames, the exulting 

cries 
Of thine apostles, loud commingling 

there, 



Might sate thine hungry ear 
Even on the bed of death ! 

But now contempt is mocking thy gray 
hairs; 

Thou art descending to the darksome 
grave, 

Unhonored and unpitied, but by those 

Whose pride is passing by like thine, 
and sheds. 

Like thine, a glare that fades before the 
sun 

Of truth, and shines but in the dread- 
ful night 

That long has lowered above the ruined 
world. 

Throughout these infinite orbs of min- 
gling light, 

Of which yon earth is one, is wide 
diffused 

A spirit of activity and life. 

That knows no term, cessation, or decay; 

That fades not when the lamp of earthly 
life. 

Extinguished in the dampness of the 
grave. 

Awhile there slumbers, more than when 
the babe 

In the dim newness of its being feels 

The impulses of sublunary things. 

And all is wonder to unpractised sense : 

But, active, steadfast, and eternal, still 

Guides the fierce whirlwind, in the tem- 
pest roars, 

Cheers in the day, breathes in the balmy 
groves. 

Strengthens in health, and poisons in 
disease; 

And in the storm of change, that cease- 
lessly 

Rolls round the eternal universe, and 
shakes 

Its undecaying battlement, presides, 

Apportioning with irresistible law 

The place each spring of its machine 
shall fill; 

So that when waves on waves tumultuous 
heap 

Confusion to the clouds, and fiercely 
driven 

Heaven's lightnings scorch the uprooted 
ocean-fords, 



48 



QUEEN MAB. 



Whilst, to the eye of shipwrecked 

mariner, 
Lone sitting on the bare and shuddering 

rock, 
All seems unlinked contingency and 

chance : 
No atom of this turbulence fulfils 
A vague and unnecessitated task, 
Or acts but as it must or ought to act. 
Even the minutest molecule of light, 
That in an April sunbeam's fleeting glow 
Fulfils its destined, though invisible 

work. 
The universal Spirit guides; nor less. 
When merciless ambition, or mad zeal, 
Has led two hosts of dupes to battle- 
field, 
That, blind, they there may dig each 

other's graves. 
And call the sad work glory, does it rule 
All passions: not a thought, a will, an 

act. 
No working of the tyrant's moody mind, 
Nor one misgiving of the slaves who 

boast 
Their servitude, to hide the shame they 

feel. 
Nor the events enchaining every will, 
That from the depths of unrecorded 

time 
Have drawn all-influencing virtue, pass 
Unrecognized, or unforeseen by thee. 
Soul of the Universe ! eternal spring 
Of life and death, of happiness and woe, 
Of all that chequers the phantasmal 

scene 
That floats before our eyes in wavering 

light. 
Which gleams but on the darkness of 

our prison, 
Whose chains and massy walls 
We feel, but cannot see. 

Spirit of Nature ! all-sufficing Power, 
Necessity ! thou mother of the world ! 
Unlike the God of human error, thou 
Requirest no prayers or praises; the 

caprice 
Of man's weak will belongs no more to 

thee 
Than do the changeful passions of his 

breast 
To thy unvarying harmony: the slave, 



Whose horrible lusts spread misery o'er 

the world. 
And the good man, who lifts, with vir- 
tuous pride. 
His being, in the sight of happiness. 
That springs from his own works; the 

poison-tree. 
Beneath whose shade all life is withered 

up, 
And the fair oak, whose leafy dome 

affords 
A temple where the vows of happy love 
Are registered, are equal in thy sight : 
No love, no hate thou cherishest; revenge 
And favoritism, and worst desire of 

fame 
Thou knowest not: all that the wide 

world contains 
Are but thy passive instruments, and 

thou 
Regard'st them all with an impartial eye, 
Whose joy or pain thy nature cannot 

feel. 
Because thou hast not human sense, 
Because thou art not human mind. 



Yes ! when the sweeping storm of tim.e 
Has sung its death-dirge o'er the ruined 

fanes 
And broken altars of the almighty fiend. 
Whose name usurps thy honors, and the 

blood 
Through centuries clotted there, has 

floated down 
The tainted flood of ages, shalt thou live 
Unchangeable ! A shrine is raised to 
thee. 
Which, nor the tempest breath of time,. 
Nor the interminable flood. 
Over earth's slight pageant rolling, 
Availeth to destroy, — 
The sensitive extension of the world. 

That wondrous and eternal fane. 
Where pain and pleasure, good and evil 

join. 
To do the will of strong necessity, 

And life, in multitudinous shapes, 
Still pressing forward where no term 
can be, 
Like hungry and unresting fiame 
Curls round the eternal columns of its 
strength. 



QUEEN MAB. 



49 



VII. 



SPIRIT. 



I WAS an infant when my mother went 

To see an atheist burned. She took me 
there : 

The dark-robed priests were met around 
the pile; 

The multitude was gazing silently; 

And as the culprit passed with dauntless 
mien, 

Tempered disdain in his unaltering eye, 

Mixed with a quiet smile, shone calmly 
forth: 

The thirsty fire crept round his manly 
limbs; 

His resolute eyes were scorched to blind- 
ness soon; 

His death-pang rent my heart ! the in- 
sensate mob 

Uttered a cry of triumph, and I wept. 

Weep not, child ! cried my mother, for 
that man 

Has said. There is no God. 

FAIRY . 

There is no God ! 
Nature confirms the faith his death-groan 

sealed: 
Let heaven and earth, let man's revolv- 
ing race, 
His ceaseless generations tell their tale; 
Let every part depending on the chain 
That links it to the whole, point to the 

hand 
That grasps its term ! let every seed that 

falls 
In silent eloquence unfold its store 
Of argument : infinity within. 
Infinity without, belie creation; 
The exterminable spirit it contains 
Is nature's only God; but human pride 
Is skilful to invent most serious names 
To hide its ignorance. 

The name of God 
Has fenced about all crime with holiness, 
Himself the creature of his worshippers. 
Whose names and attributes and pas- 
sions change, 
Seeva, Buddh, Foh, Jehovah, God, or 
Lord, 



Even with the human dupes who build 

his shrines. 
Still serving o'er the war-polluted world 
For desolation's watchword; whether 

hosts 
Stain his death-blushing chariot-wheels, 

as on 
Triumphantly they roll, whilst Brahmins 

raise 
A sacred hymn to mingle with the 

groans; 
Or countless partners of his power divide 
His tyranny to weakness; or the smoke 
Of burning towns, the cries of female 

helplessness, 
Unarmed old age, and youth, and in- 
fancy. 
Horribly massacred, ascend to heaven 
In honor of his name; or, last and worst, 
Earth groans beneath religion's iron age, 
And priests dare babble of a God of 

peace. 
Even whilst their hands are red with 

guiltless blood. 
Murdering the while, uprooting every 

germ 
Of truth, exterminating, spoiling all, 
Making the earth a slaughter-house ! 

O Spirit ! through the sense 
By which thy inner nature was apprised 
Of outward shows, vague dreams have 

rolled, 
And varied reminiscences have waked 

Tablets that never fade; 
All things have been imprinted there. 
The stars, the sea, the earth, the sky. 
Even the unshapeliest lineaments 
Of wild and fleeting visions 
Have left a record there 
To testify of earth. 

These are my empire, for to me is given 
The wonders of the human world to 

keep. 
And fancy's thin creations to endow 
With manner, being, and reality; 
Therefore a wondrous phantom, from 

the dreams 
Of human error's dense and purblind 

faith, 
I will evoke, to meet thy questioning. 
Ahasuerus, rise ! 



S<5 



QUEEN MAD. 



A strange and woe-worn wight 
Arose beside the battlement, 
And stood unmoving there. 
His inessential figure cast no shade 

Upon the golden floor; 
His port and mien bore mark of many 

years, 
And chronicles of untold ancientness 
Were legible within his beamless eye : 

Yet his cheek bore the mark of youth; 
Freshness and vigor knit his manly 

frame; 
The wisdom of old age was mingled 
there 
With youth's primeval dauntlessness; 
And inexpressible woe, 
Chastened by fearless resignation, gave 
An awful grace to his all-speaking brow. 

SPIRIT. 

Is there a God? 

AHASUERUS. 

Is there a God ! — ay, an almighty God, 
And vengeful as almighty ! Once his 

voice 
Was heard on earth : earth shuddered 

at the sound; 
The fiery-visaged firmament expressed 
Abhorrence, and the grave of nature 

yawned 
To swallow all the dauntless and the 

good 
That dared to hurl defiance at his throne. 
Girt as it was with power. None but 

slaves 
Survived, — cold-blooded slaves, who 

did the work 
Of tyrannous omnipotence; whose souls 
No honest indignation ever urged 
To elevated daring, to one deed 
Which gross and sensual self did not 

pollute. 
These slaves built temples for the om- 
nipotent fiend. 
Gorgeous and vast : the costly altars 

smoked 
With human blood, and hideous paeans 

rung 
Through all the long-drawn aisles. A 

murderer heard 



His voice in Egypt, one whose gifts and 

arts 
Had raised him to his eminence in power. 
Accomplice of omnipotence in crime, 
And confidant of the all-knowing one. 
These were Jehovah's words. 

" From an eternity of idleness 

I, God, awoke; in seven days' toil made 

earth 
From nothing; rested, and created man: 
I placed him in a paradise, and there 
Planted the tree of evil, so that he 
Might eat and perish, and my soul pro- 
cure 
Wherewith to sate its malice, and to turn, 
Even like a heartless conqueror of the 

earth, 
All misery to my fame. The race of men 
Chosen to my honor, with impunity 
May sate the lusts I planted in their 

heart. 
Here I command thee hence to lead 

them on, 
Until, with hardened feet, their conquer- 
ing troops 
Wade on the promised soil through 

woman's blood, 
And make my name be dreaded through 

the land. 
Yet ever-burning flame and ceaseless woe 
Shall be the doom of their eternal souls, 
With every soul on this ungrateful earth. 
Virtuous or vicious, weak or strong, — 

even all 
Shall perish, to fulfil the blind revenge 
(Which you, to men, call justice) of 
their God." 

The murderer'^s brow 
Quivered with horror. 

" God omnipotent. 
Is there no mercy? must our punishment 
Be endless? will long ages roll away. 
And see no term? Oh! wherefore hast 

thou made 
In mockery and wrath this evil earth? 
Mercy becomes the powerful — be but 

just: 

God ! repent and save." 

" One way remains: 

1 will beget a son, and he shall bear 
The sins of all the world; he shall arise 



QUEEN MAB. 



SI 



In an unnoticed corner of the earth, 
And there shall die upon a cross, and 

purge 
The universal crime; so that the few 
On whom my grace descends, those who 

are marked 
As vessels to the honor of their God, 
May credit this strange sacrifice, and 

save 
Their souls alive : millions shall live and 

die. 
Who ne'er shall call upon their Saviour's 

name, 
But, unredeemed, go to the gaping grave. 
Thousands shall deem it an old woman's 

tale. 
Such as the nurses frighten babes withal : 
These in a gulph of anguish and of 

ilame 
Shall curse their reprobation endlessly. 
Yet tenfold pangs shall force them to 

avow. 
Even on their beds of torment, where 

they howl, 
My honor, and the justice of their doom. 
What then avail their virtuous deeds, 

their thoughts 
Of purity, with radiant genius bright, 
Or lit with human reason's earthly ray? 
Many are called, but few will I elect. 
Do thou my bidding, Moses ! " 

Even the murderer's cheek 
Was blanched with horror, and his quiv- 
ering lips 
Scarce faintly uttered — "O almighty 

one, 
I tremble and obey ! " 

O Spirit ! centuries have set their seal 
On this heart of many wounds, and 

loaded brain, 
Since the Incarnate came: humbly he 

came. 
Veiling his horrible Godhead in the 

shape 
Of man, scorned by the world, his name 

unheard, 
Save by the rabble of his native town, 
Even as a parish demagogue. He led 
The crowd; he taught them justice, 

truth, and peace. 
In semblance; but he lit within their 

souls 



The quenchless flames of zeal, and blest 

the sword 
He brought on earth to satiate with the 

blood 
Of truth and freedom his malignant soul. 
At length his mortal frame was led to 

death. 
I stood beside him: on the torturing 

cross 
No pain assailed his unterrestrial sense; 
And yet he groaned. Indignantly I 

summed 
The massacres and miseries which his 

name 
Had sanctioned in my country, and I 

cried, 
" Go ! go ! " in mockery. 
A smile of godlike malice reillumined 
His fading lineaments. — "I go," he 

cried, 
" But thou shalt wander o'er the unquiet 

earth 
Eternally." The dampness of the 

grave 
Bathed my imperishable front. I fell, 
And long lay tranced upon the charmed 

soil. 
When I awoke hell burned within my 

brain. 
Which staggered on its seat; for all 

around 
The mouldering relics of my kindred lay, 
Even as the Almighty's ire arrested 

them, 
And in their various attitudes of death 
My murdered children's mute and eye- 
less skulls 
Glared ghastily upon me. 

But my soul, 
From sight and sense of the polluting 

woe 
Of tyranny, had long learned to prefer 
Hell's freedom to the servitude of 

heaven. 
Therefore I rose, and dauntlessly began 
My lonely and unending pilgrimage. 
Resolved to wage unweariable war 
With my almighty tyrant, and to hurl 
Defiance at his impotence to harm 
Beyond the curse I bore. The very 

hand 
That barred my passage to the peaceful 

grave 



52 



QUEEN MAB. 



Has crushed the earth to misery, and 
given 

Its empire to the chosen of his slaves. 

These have I seen, even from the earhest 
dawn 

Of weak, unstable and precarious power; 

Then preaching peace, as now they prac- 
tise war. 

So, when they turned but from the 
massacre 

Of unoffending infidels, to quench 

Their thirst for ruin in the very blood 

That flowed in their own veins, and piti- 
less zeal 

Froze every human feeling, as the wife 

Sheathed in her husband's heart the 
sacred steel, 

Even whilst its hopes were dreaming of 
her love; 

And friends to friends, brothers to 
brothq.rs stood 

Opposed in bloodiest battle-field, and 
war, 

Scarce satiable by fate's last death- 
draught waged. 

Drunk from the winepress of the Al- 
mighty's wrath; 

Whilst the red cross, in mockery of 
peace. 

Pointed to victory ! When the fray was 
done. 

No remnant of the exterminated faith 

Survived to tell its ruin, but the flesh, 

With putrid smoke poisoning the at- 
mosphere, 

That rotted on the half-extinguished pile. 

Yes ! I have seen God's worshippers 

unsheathe 
The sword of his revenge, when grace 

descended, 
Confirming all unnatural impulses, 
To sanctify their desolating deeds; 
And frantic priests waved the ill-omened 

cross 
O'er the unhappy earth : then shone the 

sun 
On showers of gore from the up flashing 

steel 
Of safe assassination, and all crime 
Made stingless by the spirits of the Lord, 
And blood-red rainbows canopied the 

land. 



Spirit ! no year of my eventful being 
Has passed unstained by crime and 

misery. 
Which flows from God's own faith. I've 

marked his slaves 
With tongues whose lies are venomous, 

beguile 
The insensate mob, and, whilst one hand 

was red 
With murder, feign to stretch the other 

out 
For brotherhood and peace; and that 

they now 
Babble of love and mercy, whilst their 

deeds 
Are marked with all the narrowness and 

crime 
That freedom's young arm dare not yet 

chastise. 
Reason may claim our gratitude, who 

now 
Establishing the imperishable throne 
Of truth, and stubborn virtue, maketh 

vain 
The unprevailing malice of my foe. 
Whose bootless rage heaps torments for 

the brave, 
Adds impotent eternities to pain. 
Whilst keenest disappointment racks his 

breast 
To see the smiles of peace around them 

play. 
To frustrate or to sanctify their doom. 



Thus have I stood, — through a wild 
waste of years 

Struggling with whirlwinds of mad 
agony, 

Yet peaceful, and serene, and self- 
enshrined. 

Mocking my powerless tyrant's horrible 
curse 

With stubborn and unalterable will. 

Even as a giant oak, which heaven's 
fierce fiame 

Had scathed in the wilderness, to stand 

A monument of fadeless ruin there; 

Yet peacefully and movelessly it braves 

The midnight conflict of the wintry storm. 
As in the sunlight's calm it spreads 
Its worn and withered arms on high 

To meet the quiet of a summer's noon. 



QUEEN MAB. 



53 



The Fairy waved her wand : 
Ahasuerus fled 
Fast as the shapes of mingled shade and 

mist, 
That lurk in the glens of a twilight grove, 
Flee from the morning beam : 
The matter of which dreams are made 
Not more endowed with actual life 
Than this phantasmal portraiture 
Of wandering human thought. 



VIII. 

The present and the past thou hast 

beheld : 
It was a desolate sight. Now, Spirit, 
learn 
The secrets of the future. — Time ! 
Unfold the brooding pinion of thy gloom, 
Render thou up thy half-devoured babes, 
And from the cradles of eternity. 
Where millions lie lulled to their por- 
tioned sleep 
By the deep murmuring stream of pass- 
ing things, 
Tear thou that gloomy shroud. — Spirit, 
behold 
Thy glorious destiny ! * 

Joy to the Spirit came. 
Through the wide rent in Time's eternal 

veil, 
Hope was seen beaming through the 
mists of fear: 
Earth was no longer hell; 
Love, freedom, health, had given 
Their ripeness to the manhood of its 
prime, 
And all its pulses beat 
Symphonious to the planetary spheres : 

Then dulcet music swelled 
Concordant with the life-strings of the 

soul; 
It throbbed in sweet and languid beat- 
ings there. 
Catching new life from transitory 

death, — 
Like the vague sighings of a wind at 

even. 
That wakes the wavelets of the slumber- 
ing sea 
And dies on the creation of its breath, 



And sinks and rises, fails and swells by 
fits: 
Was the pure stream of feeling 
That sprung from these sweet 
notes. 
And o'er the Spirit's human sympathies 
With mild and gentle motion calmly 
flowed. 

Joy to the Spirit came, — 
Such joy as when a lover sees 
The chosen of his soul in happiness, 

And witnesses her peace 
Whose woe to him were bitterer than 
death. 
Sees her unfaded cheek 
Glow mantling in first luxury of health. 

Thrills with her lovely eyes. 
Which like two stars amid the heaving 
main 
Sparkle through liquid bliss. 

Then in her triumph spoke the Fairy 

Queen : 
I will not call the ghost of ages gone 
To unfold the frightful secrets of its lore; 

The present now is past. 
And those events that desolate the earth 
Have faded from the memory of Time, 
Who dares not give reality to that 
Whose being I annul. To me is given 
The wonders of the human world to 

keep. 
Space, matter, time, and mind. Futurity 
Exposes now its treasure; let the sight 
Renew and strengthen all thy failing 

hope. 
O human Spirit ! spur thee to the goal 
Where virtue fixes universal peace, 
And midst the ebb and flow of human 

things. 
Show somewhat stable, somewhat certain 

still, 
A lighthouse o'er the wild of dreary 

waves. 

The habitable earth is full of bliss; 
Those wastes of frozen billows that were 

hurled 
By everlasting snowstorms round the 

poles, 
Where matter dared not vegetate or live, 
But ceaseless frost round the vast solitude 



54 



QUEEN MAB. 



Bound its broad zone of stillness, are 
unloosed; 

And fragrant zephyrs there from spicy 
isles 

Ruffle the placid ocean-deep, that rolls 

Its broad, bright surges to the sloping 
sand, 

Whose roar is wakened into echoings 
sweet 

To murmur through the heaven-breath- 
ing groves 

And melodize with man's blest nature 
there. 

Those deserts of immeasurable sand. 
Whose age-collected fervors scarce 

allowed 
A bird to live, a blade of grass to spring. 
Where the shrill chirp of the green 

lizard's love 
Broke on the sultry silentness alone. 
Now teem with countless rills and shady 

woods. 
Cornfields and pastures and white cot- 
tages; 
And where the startled wilderness beheld 
A savage conqueror stained in kindred 

blood, 
A tigress sating with the flesh of lambs 
The unnatural famine of her toothless 

cubs, 
Whilst shouts and bowlings through the 

desert rang. 
Sloping and smooth the daisy-spangled 

lawn. 
Offering sweet incense to the sunrise, 

smiles 
To see a babe before his mother's door. 
Sharing his morning's meal 
With the green and golden basilisk 
That comes to lick his feet. 

Those trackless deeps, where many a 
weary sail 

Has seen above the illimitable plain. 

Morning on night, and night on morning 
rise. 

Whilst still no land to greet the wanderer 
spread 

Its shadowy mountains on the sun- 
bright sea. 

Where the loud roarings of the tempest- 
waves 



So long have mingled with the gusty 

wind 
In melancholy loneliness, and swept 
The desert of those ocean solitudes. 
But vocal to the sea-bird's harrowing 

shriek. 
The bellowing monster, and the rushing 

storm, 
Now to the sweet and many-mingling 

sounds 
Of kindliest human impulses respond. 
Those lonely realms bright garden-isles 

begem. 
With lightsome clouds and shining seas 

between. 
And fertile valleys, resonant with bliss, 
Whilst green woods overcanopy the wave, 
Which like a toil-worn laborer leaps to. 

shore. 
To meet the kisses of the flowrets there. 

All things are recreated, and the flame 
Of consentaneous love inspires all life : 
The fertile bosom of the earth gives suck 
To myriads, who still grow beneath her 

care. 
Rewarding her with their pure perfect- 

ness : 
The balmy breathings of the wind inhale 
Her virtues, and diffuse them all abroad : 
Health floats amid the gentle atmosphere. 
Glows in the fruits, and mantles on the 

stream : 
No storms deform the beaming brow of 

heaven. 
Nor scatter in the freshness of its pride 
The foliage of the ever-verdant trees; 
But fruits are ever ripe, flowers ever fair. 
And autumn proudly bears her matron 

grace, 
Kindling a flush on the fair cheek of 

spring, 
Whose virgin bloom beneath the ruddy 

fruit 
Reflects its tint and blushes into love. 

The lion now forgets to thirst for blood: 
There might you see him sporting in the 

sun 
Beside the dreadless kid; his claws are 

sheathed, 
His teeth are harmless, custom's force 

has made 



QUEEN MAB. 



55 



His nature as the nature of a lamb. 
Like passion's fruit, the nightshade's 

tempting bane 
Poisons no more the pleasure it bestows : 
All bitterness is past; the cup of joy 
Unmingled mantles to the goblet's brim, 
And courts the thirsty lips it fled before. 

But chief, ambiguous man, he that can 

know 
More misery, and dream more joy than 

all; 
Whose keen sensations thrill within his 

breast 
To mingle with a loftier instinct there, 
Lending their power to pleasure and to 

pain. 
Yet raising, sharpening, and refining 

each; 
Who stands amid the ever-varying world, 
The burthen or the glory of the earth; 
He chief perceives the change, his being 

notes 
The gradual renovation, and defines 
Each movement of its progress on his 

mind. 

Man, where the gloom of the long polar 

night 
Lowers o'er the snow-clad rocks and 

frozen soil, 
Where scarce the hardiest herb that 

braves the frost 
Basks in the moonlight's ineffectual glow, 
Shrank with the plants, and darkened 

with the night; 
His chilled and narrow energies,' his 

heart, 
Insensible to courage, truth, or love. 
His stunted stature and imbecile frame, 
Marked him for some abortion of the 

earth. 
Fit compeer of the bears that roamed 

around. 
Whose habits and enjoyments were his 

own: 
His life a feverish dream of stagnant 

woe, 
Whose meagre wants but scantily ful- 
filled, 
Apprized him ever of the joyless length 
Which his short being's wretchedness 

had reached; 



His death a pang which famine, cold 

and toil 
Long on the mind, whilst yet the vital 

spark 
Clung to the body stubbornly, had 

brought : 
All was inflicted here that earth's revenge 
Could wreak on the infringers of her law; 
One curse alone was spared — the name 

of God. 

Nor where the tropics bound the realms 

of day 
With a broad belt of mingling cloud and 

flame. 
Where blue mists through the unmoving 

atmosphere 
Scattered the seeds of pestilence, and 

fed 
Unnatural vegetation, where the land 
Teemed with all earthquake, tempest 

and disease. 
Was man a nobler being; slavery 
Had crushed him to his country's blood- 
stained dust; 
Or he was bartered for the fame of power. 
Which all internal impulses destroying, 
Makes human will an article of trade; 
Or he was changed with Christians for 

their gold. 
And dragged to distant isles, where to 

the sound 
Of the flesh-mangling scourge, he does 

the work 
Of all-polluting luxury and wealth, 
Which doubly visits on the tyrants' 

heads 
The long-protracted fulness of their woe; 
Or he was led to legal butchery. 
To turn to worms beneath that burning 

sun, 
Where kings first leagued against the 

rights of men, 
And priests first traded with the name of 

God. 

Even where the milder zone afforded 

man 
A seeming shelter, yet contagion there, 
Blighting his being with unnumbered 

ills. 
Spread like a quenchless fire ; nor truth 

till late 



56 



QUEEN MAB. 



Availed to arrest its progress, or create 
That peace which first in bloodless vic- 
tory waved 
Her snowy standard o'er this favored 

clime : 
There man was long the train-bearer of 

slaves, 
The mimic of surrounding misery, 
The jackal of ambition's lion-rage. 
The bloodhound of religion's hungry 
zeal. 

Here now the human being stands adorn- 
ing 
This loveliest earth with taintless body 

and mind; 
Blest from his birth with all bland im- 
pulses, 
Which gently in his noble bosom wake 
All kindly passions and all pure desires. 
Him, still from hope to hope the bliss 

pursuing 
Which from the exhaustless lore of 

human weal 
Draws on the virtuous mind, the thoughts 

that rise 
In time-destroying infiniteness, gift 
With self-enshrined eternity, that mocks 
The unprevailing hoariness of age. 
And man, once fleeting o'er the transient 

scene 
Swift as an unremembered vision, stands 
Immortal upon earth : no longer now 
He slays the lamb that looks him in the 

face, 
And horribly devours his mangled flesh, 
Which, still avenging nature's broken 

law, 
Kindled all putrid humors in his frame, 
All evil passions, and all vain belief. 
Hatred, despair, and loathing in his 

mind, 
The germs of misery, death, disease, and 

crime. 
No longer now the winged habitants, 
That in the woods their sweet lives sing 

away. 
Flee from the form of man; but gather 

round, 
And prune their sunny feathers on the 

hands 
Which little children stretch in friendly 

sport 



Towards these dreadless partners of their 

play. 
All things are void of terror : man has 

lost 
His terrible prerogative, and stands 
An equal amidst equals: happiness 
And science dawn though late upon the 

earth; 
Peace cheers the mind, health renovates 

the frame; 
Disease and pleasure cease to mingle 

here, 
Reason and passion cease to combat 

there; 
Whilst each unfettered o'er the earth 

extend 
Their all-subduing energies, and wield 
The sceptre of a vast dominion there; 
Whilst every shape and mode of matter 

lends 
Its force to the omnipotence of mind, 
Which from its dark mine drags the gem 

of truth 
To decorate its paradise of peace. 



IX. 



O HAPPY Earth ! reality of Heaven ! 

To which those restless souls that cease- 
lessly 

Throng through the human universe, 
aspire ; 

Thou consummation of all mortal hope ! 

Thou glorious prize of blindly-working 
will ! 

Whose rays, diffused throughout all space 
and time. 

Verge to one point and blend forever 
there : 

Of purest spirits thou pure dwelling- 
place ! 

Where care and sorrow, impotence and 
crime, 

Languor, disease, and ignorance dare not 
come: 

O happy Earth, reality of Heaven ! 

Genius has seen thee in her passionate 

dreams. 
And dim forebodings of thy loveliness 
Haunting the human heart, have there 

entwined 



QUEEN MAB. 



57 



Those rooted hopes of some sweet place 

of bliss 
Where friends and lovers meet to part 

no more. 
Thou art the end of all desire and will, 
The product of all action; and the souls 
That by the paths of an aspiring change 
Have reached thy haven of perpetual 

peace, 
There rest from the eternity of toil 
That framed the fabric of thy perfect- 

ness. 

Even Time, the conqueror, fled thee in 

his fear; 
That hoary giant, who, in lonely pride. 
So long had ruled the world, that nations 

fell 
Beneath his silent footstep. Pyramids, 
That for millenniums had withstood the 

tide 
Of human things, his storm-breath drove 

in sand 
Across that desert where their stones 

survived 
The name of him whose pride had 

heaped them there. 
Yon monarch, in his solitary pomp. 
Was but the mushroom of a summer 

day. 
That his light-winged footstep pressed 

to dust : 
Time was the king of earth : all things 

gave way 
Before him, but the fixed and virtuous 

will. 
The sacred sympathies of soul and sense, 
That mocked his fury and prepared his 

fall. 

Yet slow and gradual dawned the morn 

of love; 
Long lay the clouds of darkness o'er the 

scene. 
Till from its native heaven they rolled 

away: 
First, crime triumphant o'er all hope 

careered 
Unblushing, undisguising, bold and 

strong ; 
Whilst falsehood, tricked in virtue's 

attributes, 
Long sanctified all deeds of vice and woe, 



Till done by her own venomous sting to 
death. 

She left the moral world without a law. 

No longer fettering passion's fearless 
wing. 

Nor searing reason with the brand of 
God. 

Then steadily the happy ferment worked; 

Reason was free; and wild though pas- 
sion went 

Through tangled glens and wood-em- 
bosomed meads. 

Gathering a garland of the strangest 
flowers. 

Yet like the bee returning to her queen, 

She bound the sweetest on her sister's 
brow, 

Who meek and sober kissed the sportive 
child. 

No longer trembling at the broken rod. 

Mild was the slow necessity of death: 
The tranquil spirit failed beneath its 

grasp. 
Without a groan, almost without a fear, 
Calm as a voyager to some distant land, 
And full of wonder, full of hope as he. 
The deadly germs of languor and disease 
Died in the human frame, and purity 
Blest with all gifts her earthly worship- 
pers. 
How vigorous then the athletic form of 

age ! 
How clear its open and unwrinkled brow ! 
Where neither avarice, cunning, pride, 

nor care. 
Had stamped the seal of gray deformity 
On all the mingling lineaments of time. 
How lovely the intrepid front of youth ! 
Which meek-eyed courage decked with 

freshest grace; 
Courage of soul, that dreaded not a 

name, 
And elevated will, that journeyed on 
Through life's phantasmal scene in fear- 
lessness, 
With virtue, love, and pleasure, hand in 
hand. 

Then, that sweet bondage which is free- 
dom's self. 
And rivets with sensation's softest tie 
The kindred sympathies of human souls, 



58 



QUEEN MAB. 



Needed no fetters of tyrannic law : 
Those delicate and timid impulses 
In nature's primal modesty arose, 
And with undoubted confidence dis- 
closed 
The growing longings of its dawning 

love, 
Unchecked by dull and selfish chastity, 
That virtue of the cheaply virtuous, 
Who pride themselves in senselessness 

and frost. 
No longer prostitution's venomed bane 
Poisoned the springs of happiness and 

life; 
Woman and man, in confidence and love, 
Equal and free and pure together trod 
The mountain-paths of virtue, which no 

more 
Were stained with blood from many a 
pilgrim's feet. 

Then, where, through distant ages, long 
in pride 

The palace of the monarch-slave had 
mocked 

Famine's faint groan, and penury's silent 
tear, 

A heap of crumbling ruins stood, and 
threw 

Year after year their stones upon the field, 

Wakening a lonely echo; and the leaves 

Of the old thorn, that on the topmost 
tower 

Usurped the royal ensign's grandeur, 
shook 

In the stern storm that swayed the top- 
most tower 

And whispered strange tales in the whirl- 
wind's ear. 

Low through the lone cathedral's roof- 
less aisles 
The melancholy winds a death-dirge 

sung: 
It were a sight of awfulness to see 
The works of faith and slavery, so vast, 
So sumptuous, yet so perishing withal ! 
Even as the corpse that rests beneath its 

wall. 
A thousand mourners deck the pomp of 

death 
To-day, the breathing marble glows above 
To decorate its memory, and tongues 



Are busy of its life : to-morrow, worms 
In silence and in darkness seize their 
prey. 

Within the massy prison's mouldering 

courts. 
Fearless and free the ruddy children 

played, 
Weaving gay chaplets for their innocent 

brows 
With the green ivy and the red wall- 
flower, 
That mock the dungeon's unavailing 

gloom; 
The ponderous chains, and gratings of 

strong iron. 
There rusted amid heaps of broken stone 
That mingled slowly with their native 

earth : 
There the broad beam of day, which 

feebly once 
Lighted the cheek of lean captivity 
With a pale and sickly glare, then freelj' 

shone 
On the pure smiles of infant playfulness: 
No more the shuddering voice of hoarse 

despair 
Pealed through the echoing vaults, but 

soothing notes 
Of ivy-fingered winds and gladsome birds 
And merriment were resonant around. 

These ruins soon left not a wreck behind : 
Their elements, wide scattered o'er the 

globe. 
To happier shapes were moulded, and 

became 
Ministrant to all blissful impulses: 
Thus human things were perfected, and 

earth. 
Even as a child beneath its mother's 

love. 
Was strengthened in all excellence, and 

grew 
Fairer and nobler with each passing year. 

Now Time his dusky pennons o'er the 

scene 
Closes in steadfast darkness, and the past 
Fades from our charmed sight. My 

task is done: 
Thy lore is learned. Earth's wonders 

are thine own. 



QUEEN MAB. 



59 



With all the fear and all the hope they 

bring. 
My spells are past: the present now 

recurs. 
Ah me ! a pathless wilderness remains 
Vet unsubdued by man's reclaiming hand. 
Yet, human Spirit, bravely hold thy 

course, 
Let virtue teach thee firmly to pursue 
The gradual paths of an aspiring change : 
For birth and life and death, and that 

strange state 
Before the naked soul has found its 

home, 
All tend to perfect happiness, and urge 
The restless wheels of being on their 

way, 
Whose flashing spokes, instinct with 

infinite life. 
Bicker and burn to gain their destined 

goal: 
For birth but wakes the spirit to the sense 
Of outward shows, whose unexperienced 

shape 
New modes of passion to its frame may 

lend; 
Life is its state of action, and the store 
Of all events is aggregated there 
That variegate the eternal universe; 
Death is a gate of dreariness and gloom, 
That leads to azure isles and beaming 

skies 
And happy regions of eternal hope. 
Therefore, O Spirit ! fearlessly bear on : 
Though storms may break the primrose 

on its stalk. 
Though frosts may blight the freshness 

of its bloom, 
Yet spring's awakening breath will woo 

the earth. 
To feed with kindliest dews its favorite 

flower, 
That blooms in mossy banks and dark- 
some glens. 
Lighting the green wood with its sunny 

smile. 

Fear not then, Spirit, death's disrobing 

hand, 
So welcome when the tyrant is awake, 
So welcome when the bigot's hell-torch 

burns; 
'T is but the voyage of a darksome hour, 



The transient gulph-dream of a startling 

sleep. 
Death is no foe to virtue : earth has 

seen 
Love's brighest roses on the scaffold 

bloom, 
Mingling with freedom's fadeless laurels 

there. 
And presaging the truth of visioned bliss. 
Are there not hopes within thee, which 

this scene 
Of linked and gradual being has con- 
firmed ? 
Whose stingings bade thy heart look 

further still. 
When, to the moonlight walk by Henry 

led. 
Sweetly and sadly thou didst talk of 

death? 
And wilt thou rudely tear them from thy 

breast. 
Listening supinely to a bigot's creed, 
Or tamely crouching to the tyrant's rod, 
Whose iron thongs are red with human 

gore? 
Never: but bravely bearing on, thy will 
Is destined an eternal war to wage 
With tyranny and falsehood, and uproot 
The germs of misery from the human 

heart. 
Thine is the hand whose piety would 

soothe 
The thorny pillow of unhappy crime, 
Whose impotence an easy pardon gains, 
Watching its wanderings as a friend's 

disease: 
Thine is the brow whose mildness would 

defy 
Its fiercest rage, and brave its sternest 

will, 
When fenced by power and master of 

the world. 
Thou art sincere and good; of resolute 

mind, 
Free from heart-withering custom's cold 

control. 
Of passion lofty, pure and unsubdued. 
Earth's pride and meanness could not 

vanquish thee, 
And therefore art thou worthy of the 

boon 
Which thou hast now received: virtue 

shall keep 



6o 



QUEEN MAB. 



Thy footsteps in the path that thou hast 

trod, 
And many days of beaming hope shall 

bless 
Thy spotless life of sweet and sacred love. 
Go, happy one, and give that bosom joy 
Whose sleepless spirit waits to catch 
Light, life and rapture from thy smile. 

The Fairy waves her wand of charm. 
Speechless with bliss the Spirit mounts 
the car. 
That rolled beside the battlement, 
Bending her beamy eyes in thankfulness. 
Again the enchanted steeds were 

yoked, 
Again the burning wheels inflame 
The steep descent of heaven's untrodden 
way. 
Fast and far the chariot flew : 
The vast and fiery globes that rolled 
Around the Fairy's palace-gate 
Lessened by slow degrees and soon 

appeared 
Such tiny twinklers as the planet orbs 
That there attendant on the solar power 
With borrowed light pursued their nar- 
rower way. 

Earth floated then below : 
The chariot paused a moment there; 
The Spirit then descended : 
The restless coursers pawed the ungenial 

soil, 
Snuffed the gross air, and then, their 

errand done, 
Unfurled their pinions to the winds of 
heaven. 

The Body and the Soul united then, 
A gentle start convulsed lanthe's frame : 
Her veiny eyelids quietly unclosed; 
Moveless awhile the dark blue orbs re- 
mained: 
She looked around in wonder and be- 
held 
Henry, who kneeled in silence by her 

couch, 
Watching her sleep with looks of speech- 
less love, 
And the bright beaming stars 
That through the casement shone. 



SHELLEY'S NOTES. 

L — Page 30. 

The sun's unclouded orb 
Rolled through the black concave. 

Beyond our atmosphere the sun would 
appear a rayless orb of fire in the midst 
of a black concave. The equal diffusion 
of its light on earth is owing to the re- 
fraction of the rays by the atmosphere, 
and their reflection from other bodies. 
Light consists either of vibrations propa- 
gated through a subtle medium, or of 
numerous minute particles repelled in all 
directions from the luminous body. Its 
velocity greatly exceeds that of any sub- 
stance with which we are acquainted: 
observations on the eclipses of Jupiter's 
satellites have demonstrated that light 
takes up no more than 8' 7" in passing 
from the sun to the earth, a distance of 
95,000,000 miles. — Some idea maybe 
gained of the immense distance of the 
fixed stars when it is computed that many 
years would elapse before light could 
reach this earth from the nearest of 
them; yet in one year light travels 5,422,- 
400,000,000 miles, which is a distance 
5,707,600 times greater than that of the 
sun from the earth. 

I. — Page 30. 

Whilst round the chariot's way 
Innumerable systems rolled. 

The plurality of worlds, — the indefi- 
nite immensity of the universe is a most 
awful subject of contemplation. He who 
rightly feels its mystery and grandeur is 
in no danger of seduction from the 
falsehoods of religious systems, or of 
deifying the principle of the universe. 
It is impossible to believe that the Spirit 
that pervades this infinite machine begat 
a son upon the body of a Jewish woman; 
or is angei-ed at the consequences of that 
necessity, which is a synonym of itself. 
All that miserable tale of the Devil, and 
Eve, and an Intercessor, with the child- 
ish mummeries of the God of the Jews, 



NOTES TO QUEEN MAB. 



6i 



is irreconcilable with the knowledge of 
the stars. The works of his fingers have 
borne witness against him. 

The nearest of the fixed stars is incon- 
ceivably distant from the earth, and they 
are probably proportionably distant from 
each other. By a calculation of the 
velocity of light, Sirius is supposed to be 
at least 54,224,000,000,000 miles from 
the earth. 1 That which appears only like 
a thin and silvery cloud streaking the 
heaven is in effect composed of innumer- 
able clusters of suns, each shining with 
its own light, and illuminating numbers 
of planets that revolve around them. 
Millions and millions of suns are ranged 
around us, all attended by innumerable 
worlds, yet calm, regular, and harmoni- 
ous, all keeping the paths of immutable 
necessity. 

IV. — Page 40. 

These are the hired bravos tvho defend 
The tyrant's throne. 

To employ murder as a means of jus- 
tice is an idea which a man of an enlight- 
ened mind will not dwell upon with 
pleasure. To march forth in rank and 
file, and all the pomp of streamers and 
trumpets, for the purpose of shooting at 
our fellowmen as a mark; to inflict upon 
them all the variety of wound and anguish ; 
to leave them weltering in their blood; 
to wander over the field of desolation, 
and count the number of the dying and 
the dead, — are employments which in 
thesis we may maintain to be necessary, 
luit which no good man will contem- 
plate with gratulation and delight. A 
battle we suppose is won : — thus truth 
is established, thus the cause of jus- 
tice is confirmed ! It surely requires no 
common sagacity to discern the connec- 
tion between this immense heap of ca- 
lamities and the assertion of truth or the 
maintenance of justice. 

" Kings, and ministers of state, the real 
authors of the calamity, sit unmolested in 
their cabinet, while those against whom 
the fury of the storm is directed are, for 

^ See Nicholson's Eticyclopedia, art. Light. 



the most part, persons who have been 
trepanned into the service, or who are 
dragged unwillingly from their peaceful 
homes into the field of battle. A soldier 
is a man whose business it is to kill those 
who never offended him, and who are the 
innocent martyrs of other men's iniqui- 
ties. Whatever may become of the ab- 
stract question of the justifiableness of 
war, it seems impossible that the soldier 
should not be a depraved and unnatural 
being. 

' ' To these more serious and momentous 
considerations it may be proper to add a 
recollection of the ridiculousness of the 
military character. Its first constituent is 
obedience : a soldier is, of all descriptions 
of men, the most completely a machine; 
yet his profession inevitably teaches him 
something of dogmatism, swaggering, and 
self-consequence : he is like the puppet 
of a showman, who, at the very time he 
is made to strut and swell and display 
the most farcical airs, we perfectly know 
cannot assume the most insignificant ges- 
ture, advance either to the right or the 
left, but as he is moved by his exhibitor." 
— Godwin's Euqjiirer, Essay v. 

I will here subjoin a little poem, so 
strongly expressive of my abhorrence of 
despotism and falsehood, that I fear lest 
it never again may be depictured so viv- 
idly. This opportunity is perhaps the 
only one that ever will occur of rescuing 
it from oblivion. 



FALSEHOOD AND VICE. 
A DIALOGUE. 

Whilst monarchs laughed upon their 

thrones 
To hear a famished nation's groans, 
And hugged the wealth wrung from the 

woe 
That makes its eyes and veins o'erflow, — 
Those thrones, high built upon the heaps 
Of bones where frenzied Famine sleeps, 
Where Slavery wields her scourge of iron, 
Red with mankind's unheeded gore, 
And war's mad fiends the scene environ, 
Mingling with shrieks a drunken roar, 



62 



NOTES TO QUEEN MAB. 



There Vice and Falsehood took their 

stand, 
High raised above the unhappy land. 

FALSEHOOD. 

Brother ! arise from the dainty fare, 
Which thousands have toiled and bled to 

bestow; 
A finer feast for thy hungry ear 
Is the news that I bring of human woe. 

VICE. 

And, secret one, what hast thou done, 
To compare, in thy tumid pride, with me? 
I, whose career, through the blasted year, 
Has been tracked by despair and agony. 

FALSEHOOD. 



What have I done ! 1 have torn the 

robe 
From baby Truth's unsheltered form, 
And round the desolated globe 
Borne safely the bewildering charm : 
My tyrant-slaves to a dungeon-fioor 
Have bound the fearless innocent, 
And streams of fertilizing gore 
Flow from her bosom's hideous rent, 
Which this unfailing dagger gave. — 
I dread that blood ! — no more — this day 
Is ours, though her eternal ray 
Must shine upon our grave. 
Yet know, proud Vice, had I not given 
To thee the robe I stole from heaven, 
Thy shape of ugliness and fear 
Had never gained admission here. 

VICE. 

And know, that had I disdained to toil. 
But sate in my loathsome cave the while, 
And ne'er to these hateful sons of heaven 
GOLD, MONARCHY, and MURDER, 

given; 
Hadst thou with all thine art essayed 
One of thy games then to have played, 
With all thine overweening boast, 
Falsehood ! I tell thee thou hadst lost ! — 
Yet wherefore this dispute? — we tend, 
Fraternal, to one common end; 
In this cold grave beneath my feet, 



Will our hopes, our fears, and our labors, 
meet. 

FALSEHOOD. 

I brought my daughter, RELIGION, on 

earth : 
She smothered Reason's babes in their 

birth ; 
But dreaded their mother's eye severe, — 
So the crocodile slunk off slyly in fear, 
And loosed her bloodhounds from the 

den. . . . 
They started from dreams of slaughtered 

men. 
And, by the light of her poison eye. 
Did her work o'er the wide earth fright- 
fully: 
The dreadful stench of her torches' flare. 
Fed with human fat, polluted the air: 
The curses, the shrieks, the ceaseless cries 
Of the many-mingling miseries, 
As on she trod, ascended high 
And trumpeted my victory ! — 
Brother, tell what thou hast done. 

VICE. 

I have extinguished the noonday sun, 
In the carnage-smoke of battles won: 
Famine, murder, hell and power 
Were glutted in that glorious hour 
Which searchless fate had stamped for me 
With the seal of her security. . . . 
For the bloated wretch on yonder throne 
Commanded the bloody fray to rise. 
Like me he joyed at the stifled moan 
Wrung from a nation's miseries; 
W^hile the snakes, whose slime even him 

defiled, 
In ecstasies of malice smiled : 
They thought 'twas theirs, — but mine 

the deed ! 
Theirs is the toil, but mine the meed — 
Ten thousand victims madly bleed. 
They dream that tyrants goad them there 
With poisonous war to taint the air: 
These tyrants, on their beds of thorn, 
Swell with the thoughts of murderous 

fame. 
And with their gains to lift my name 
Restless they plan from night to morn: 
I — I do all; without my aid 



NOTES TO QUEEN MAS. 



63 



Thy daughter, that relentless maid, 
Could never o'er a death-bed urge 
The fury of her venomed scourge. 



FALSEHOOD. 

Brother, well: — the world is ours; 
And whether thou or I have won, 
The pestilence expectant lours 
On all beneath yon blasted sun. 
Our joys, our toils, our honors meet 
In the milk-white and wormy winding- 
sheet : 
A short-lived hope, unceasing care, 
Some heartless scraps of godly prayer, 
A moody curse, and a frenzied sleep 
Ere gapes the grave's unclosing deep, 
A tyrant's dream, a coward's start, 
The ice that clings to a priestly heart, 
A judge's frown, a courtier's smile, 
Make the great whole for which we toil; 
And, brother, whether thou or I 
, Have done the work of misery, 
It little boots : thy toil and pain, 
Without my aid, were more than vain; 
And but for thee I ne'er had sate 
The guardian of heaven's palace gate. 

V. — Page 41, 

Thus do the generations of the earth 

Go to the grave, and issue from thewottib. 

One generation passeth away and an- 
other generation cometh, but the earth 
abideth for ever. The sun also ariseth 
and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to 
his place where he arose. The wind 
goeth toward the south and turneth about 
unto the north, it whirleth about continu- 
ally, and the wind returneth again accord- 
ing to his circuits. All the rivers run into 
the sea, yet the sea is not full; unto the 
\\-ACi whence the rivers come, thither 
shall they return again. — Ecclesiastes, 
chap. i. 4-7. 

Y. — Page 41. 

Even as the leaves 
Which the keeii frost-ivind of the waning 

year 
Has scattered on the forest soil. 



O'lT) irep (plj?.Xu)v yivffi, rotij^i Knl av^piov. 
<pv?J.a rd jiiv t' aviixos ■yafia^t^ X^^^' aXXa hi 

8' vkr, 
TijXfOowaa tbvti, eapog (5' intyiyvfTai lapr] ' 
"flj dj/^pcDv ytvifi, r} fxlv <p6fi, ^<5' dTTokijyii. 

lAIAA. Z, 1. 146. 

V. — Page 42. 

The mod of feasants, nobles, priests, and 
kings. 

Suave mari magno turbantibus aequora 

ventis 
E terra magnum alterius spectare labo- 

rem; 
Non quia vexari quemquam 'st jucunda 

voluptas, 
Sed quibus ipse malis careas quia cernere 

suave 'st. 
Suave etiam belli certamina magna tueri, 
Per campos instructa, tua sine parte 

pericli; 
Sed nil dulcius est bene quam munita 

tenere 
Edita doctrina sapientum templa serena; 
Despicere unde queas alios, passimque 

videre 
Errare atque viam palanteis quserere vitae ; ■ 
Certare ingenio; contendere nobilitate; 
Nocteis atque dies niti praestante labore 
Ad summas emergere opes, rerumque 

potiri, 
O miseras hominum menteis ! O pectora 

caeca ! Luc. lib. ii. 1-14. 

V. — Page 43. 

And statesmen boast 
Of tvealth ! 

There is no real wealth but the labor 
of man. Were the mountains of gold 
and the valleys of silver, the world would 
not be one grain of corn the richer; no 
one comfort would be added to the hu- 
man race. In consequence of our con- 
sideration for the precious metals, one 
man is enabled to heap to himself luxu- 
ries at the expense of the necessaries of 
his neighbor; a system admirably fitted 
to produce all the varieties of disease 
and crime, which never fail to character- 
ize the two extremes of opulence and 
penury. A speculator takes pride to 



64 



NOTES TO QUEEN MAB. 



himself as the promoter of his country's 
prosperity, who employs a number of 
hands in the manufacture of articles 
avowedly destitute of use, or subser- 
vient only to the unhallowed cravings of 
luxury and ostentation. The nobleman, 
who employs the peasants of his neigh- 
borhood in building his palaces, until 
'■'■ jam paiica aratro jugera regicB moles 
relinquiint,''^ flatters himself that he has 
gained the title of a patriot by yielding 
to the impulses of vanity. The show 
and pomp of courts adduce the same 
apology for its continuance; and many 
a fete has been given, many a woman 
has eclipsed her beauty by her dress, to 
benefit the laboring poor and to encour- 
age trade. Who does not see that this 
is a remedy which aggravates, whilst it 
palliates the countless diseases of society? 
The poor are set to labor, — for what? 
Not the food for which they famish : not 
the blankets for want of which their 
babes are frozen by the cold of their mis- 
erable hovels : not those comforts of civ- 
ilization without which civilized man is far 
inore miserable than the meanest savage; 
oppressed as he is by all its insidious 
evils, within the daily and taunting pros- 
pect of its innumerable benefits assidu- 
ously exhibited before him: — no; for 
the pride of power, for the miserable 
isolation of pride, for the false pleasures 
of the hundredth part of society. No 
greater evidence is afforded of the wide 
extended and radical mistakes of civil- 
ized man than this fact : those arts which 
are essential to his very being are held 
in the greatest contempt; employments 
are lucrative in an inverse ratio to their 
usefulness: ^ the jeweller, the toyman, 
the actor gains farhe and wealth by the 
exercise of his useless and ridiculous 
art; whilst the cultivator of the earth, he 
without whom society must cease to sub- 
sist, struggles through contempt and pen- 
ury, and perishes by that famine which 
but for his unceasing exertions would 
annihilate the rest of mankind. 

I will not insult common sense by in- 



1 See Rousseau, De V Inegaliti parmi les 
Hotn^nes, note 7. 



sisting on the doctrine of the natural 
equality of man. The question is not 
concerning its desirableness, but its prac- 
ticability : so far as it is practicable, it is 
desirable. That state of human society 
which approaches nearer to an equal 
partition of its benefits and evils should, 
ciEteris paribus, be preferred : but so 
long as we conceive that a wanton ex- 
penditure of human labor, not for the 
necessities, not even for the luxuries of 
the mass of society, but for the egotism 
and ostentation of a few of its mem- 
bers, is defensible on the ground of pub- 
lic justice, so long we neglect to ap- 
proximate to the redemption of the 
human race. 

Labor is required for physical, and 
leisure for moral improvement : from the 
former of these advantages the rich, and 
from the latter the poor, by the inevita- 
ble conditions of their respective situ- 
ations, are precluded. A state which 
should combine the advantages of both 
would be subjected to the evils of 
neither. He that is deficient in firm 
health, or vigorous intellect, is but half 
a man : hence it follows that to subject 
the laboring classes to unnecessary la- 
bor is wantonly depriving them of any 
opportunities of intellectual improve- 
ment; and that the rich are heaping up 
for their own mischief the disease, lassi- 
tude, and ennui by which their existence 
is rendered an intolerable burden. 

English reformers exclaim against sin- 
ecures, — but the true pension list is 
the rent-roll of the landed proprietors: 
wealth is a power usurped by the few, 
to compel the many to labor for their 
benefit. The laws which support this 
system derive their force from the igno- 
rance and credulity of its victims: they 
are the result of a conspiracy of the few 
against the many, who are themselves 
obliged to purchase this pre-eminence 
by the loss of all real comfort. 

" The commodities that substantially 
contribute to the subsistence of the 
human species form a very short cata- 
logue : they demand from us but a slen- 
der portion of industry. If these only 
were produced, and sufficiently pro- 



NOTES TO QUEEN MAB. 



65 



duced, the species of man would be 
continued. If the labor necessarily 
required to produce them were equi- 
tably divided among the poor, and, still 
more, if it were equitably divided among 
all, each man's share of labor would be 
light, and his portion of leisure would 
be ample. There was a time when this 
leisure would have been of small com- 
parative value : it is to be hoped that the 
time will come when it will be applied 
to the most important purposes. Those 
hours which are not required for the 
production of the necessaries of life 
may be devoted to the cultivation of the 
understanding, the enlarging our stock 
of knowledge, the refining our taste, and 
thus opening to us new and more ex- 
quisite sources of enjoyment. 

" It was perhaps necessary that a 
period of monopoly and oppression 
should subsist, before a period of culti- 
vated equality could subsist. Savages 
perhaps would never have been excited 
to the discovery of truth and the inven- 
tion of art but by the narrow motives 
which such a period affords. But surely, 
after the savage state has ceased, and 
men have set out in the glorious career 
of discovery and invention, monopoly 
and oppression cannot be necessary to 
prevent them from returning to a state 
of barbarism." — Godwin's Enquirer^ 
Essay ii. See also Political Justice, book 
VIII. chap. ii. 

It is a calculation of this admirable 
author, that all the conveniences of civ- 
ilized life might be produced, if society 
would divide the labor equally among 
its members, by each individual being 
employed in labor two hours during the 
day. 

V. — Page 43. 

or religion 
Drives his wife raving mad. 

I am acquainted with a lady of con- 
siderable accomplishments, and the 
mother of a numerous family, whom 
the Christian religion has goaded to 



incurable insanity. A parallel case is, 
I believe, within the experience of every 
physician. 

Nam jam ssepe homines patriam, carosque 

parentes 
Prodiderunt, vitare Acherusia templa 

petentes. 

Lucretius, iii., 85. 

V. — Page 44. 
Even love is sold. 

Not even the intercourse of the sexes 
is exempt from the despotism of posi- 
tive institution. Law pretends even to 
govern the indisciplinable wanderings of 
passion, to put fetters on the clearest 
deductions of reason, and, by appeals 
to the will, to subdue the involuntary 
affections of our nature. Love is inevi- 
tably consequent upon the perception 
of loveliness. Love withers under con- 
straint : its very essence is liberty : it is 
compatible neither with obedience, jeal- 
ousy, nor fear: it is there most pure, 
perfect, and unlimited, where its votaries 
live in confidence, equality, and un- 
reserve. 

How long then ought the sexual con- 
nection to last? what law ought to 
specify the extent of the grievances 
which should limit its duration? A hus- 
band and wife ought to continue so long 
united as they love each other : any law 
which should bind them to cohabitation 
for one moment after the decay of their 
affection would be a most intolerable 
tyranny, and the most unworthy of tol- 
eration. How odious an usurpation of 
the right of private judgment should that 
law be considered which should make 
the ties of friendship indissoluble, in 
spite of the caprices, the inconstancy, 
the fallibility, and capacity for improve- 
ment of the human mind. And by so 
much would the fetters of love be 
heavier and more unendurable than 
those of friendship, as love is more 
vehement and capricious, more depend- 
ent on those delicate peculiarities of 
imagination, and less capable of reduc- 
tion to the ostensible merits of the object. 



66 



NOTES TO QUEEN MAB. 



The state of society in which we exist 
is a mixture of feudal savageness and 
imperfect civilization. The narrow and 
unenUghtened morality of the Christian 
religion is an aggravation of these evils. 
It is not even until lately that mankind 
have admitted that happiness is the sole 
end of the science of ethics, as of all 
other sciences; and that the fanatical 
idea of mortifying the flesh for the love 
of God has been discarded. I have 
heard, indeed, an ignorant collegian ad- 
duce, in favor of Christianity, its hostil- 
ity to every worldly feeling ! ^ 

But if happiness be the object of mo- 
rality, of all human unions and disunions; 
if the worthiness of every action is to be 
estimated by the quantity of pleasurable 
sensation it is calculated to produce, 
then the connection of the sexes is so 
long sacred as it contributes to the com- 
fort of the parties, and is naturally dis- 
solved when its evils are greater than its 
benefits. There is nothing immoral in 
this separation. Constancy has nothing 
virtuous in itself, independently of the 
pleasure it confers, and partakes of the 
temporizing spirit of vice in proportion 
as it endures tamely moral defects of 
magnitude in the object of its indiscreet 
choice. Love is free: to promise for- 
ever to love the same woman is not less 
absurd than to promise to believe the 
same creed: such a vow, in both cases, 
excludes us from all inquiry. The lan- 
guage of the votarist is this : The woman 
I now love may be infinitely inferior to 
many others; the creed I now profess 
may be a mass of errors and absurdities; 
but I exclude myself from all future in- 
formation as to the amiability of the one 
and the truth of the other, resolving 



1 The first Christian emperor made a law by 
which seduction was punished with death ; if 
the female pleaded her own consent, she was 
also punished with death ; if the parents en- 
deavored to screen the criminals, they were ban- 
ished and their estates were confiscated ; the 
slaves who might be accessory were burned alive, 
or forced to swallow melted lead. The very off- 
spring of an illegal love were involved in the 
consequences of the sentence. — Gibbon's De- 
cline and Fall, etc. vol. ii. p. 210. See also, for 
the hatred of the primitive Christians to love 
and even marriage, p. 269. 



blindly, and in spite of conviction, to 
adhere to them. Is this the language of 
delicacy and reason? Is the love of 
such a frigid heart of more worth than 
its belief? 

The present system of constraint does 
no more, in the majority of instances, 
than make hypocrites or open enemies. 
Persons of delicacy and virtue, unhappily 
united to one whom they find it impos- 
sible to love, spend the loveliest season 
of their life in unproductive efforts to 
appear otherwise than they are, for the 
sake of the feelings of their partner or 
the welfare of their mutual offspring: 
those of less generosity and refinement 
openly avow their disappointment, and 
linger out the remnant of that union, 
which only death can dissolve, in a state 
of incurable bickering and hostility. The 
early education of their children takes its 
color from the squabbles of the parents; 
they are nursed in a systematic school of 
ill-humor, violence, and falsehood. Had 
they been suffered to part at the moment 
when indifference rendered their union 
irksome, they would have been spared 
many years of misery: they would have 
connected themselves more suitably, and 
would have found that happiness in the 
society of more congenial partners which 
is forever denied them by the despotism 
of marriage. They would have been sep- 
arately useful and happy members of soci- 
ety, who, whilst united, were miserable 
and rendered misanthropical by misery. 
The conviction that wedlock is indissolu- 
ble holds out the strongest of all tempta- 
tions to the perverse : theyindulge without 
restraint in acrimony, and all the little 
tyrannies of domestic life, when they 
know that their victim is without appeal. 
If this connection were put on a rational 
basis, each would be assured that habit- 
ual ill-temper would terminate in separa- 
tion, and would check this vicious and 
dangerous propensity. 

Prostitution is the legitimate offspring 
of marriage and its accompanying errors. 
Women, for no other crime than having 
followed the dictates of a natural appe- 
tite, are driven with fury from the com- 
, forts and sympathies of society. It is less 



NOTES TO QUEEN MAE. 



67 



venial than murder; and the punishment 
which is inflicted on her who destroys 
her child to escape reproach is lighter 
than the life of agony and disease to 
which the prostitute is irrecoverably 
doomed. Has a woman obeyed the 
impulse of unerring nature; — society de- 
clares war against her, pitiless and eternal 
war : she must be the tame slave, she 
must make no reprisals; theirs is the 
right of persecution, hers the duty of 
endurance. She lives a life of infamy: 
the loud and bitter laugh of scorn scares 
her from all return. She dies of long 
and lingering disease; yet she is in fault, 
she is the criminal, she the froward and 
untamable child, — and society, forsooth, 
the pure and virtuous matron, who casts 
her as an abortion from her undefiled 
bosom ! Society avenges herself on the 
criminals of her own creation; she is 
employed in anathematizing the vice to- 
day, which yesterday she was the most 
zealous to teach. Thus is formed one- 
tenth of the population of London : mean- 
while the evil is twofold. Young men, 
excluded by the fanatical idea of chastity 
from the society of modest and accom- 
plished women, associate with these 
vicious and miserable beings, destroying 
thereby all those exquisite and delicate 
sensibilities whose existence cold-hearted 
worldlings have denied; annihilating all 
genuine passion, and debasing that to a 
selfish feeling which is the excess of gen- 
erosity and devotedness. Their body and 
mind alike crumble into a hideous wreck 
of humanity; idiocy and disease become 
perpetuated in their miserable offspring, 
and distant generations suffer for the big- 
oted morality of their forefathers. Chastity 
is a monkish and evangelical superstition, 
a greater foe to natural temperance even 
than unintellectual sensuality; it strikes 
at the root of all domestic happiness, and 
consigns more than half of the human race 
to misery, that some few may monopolize 
according to law. A system could not well 
have been devised more studiously hostile 
to human happiness than marriage. 

I conceive that from the abolition of 
marriage, the fit and natural arrangement 
of sexual connection would result. I by 



no means assert that the intercourse would 
be promiscuous: on the contrary, it ap- 
pears, from the relation of parent to child, 
that this union is generally of long dura- 
tion, and marked above all others with 
generosity and self-devotion. But this is 
a subject which it is perhaps premature 
to discuss. That which will result from 
the abolition of marriage will be natural 
and right; because choice and change will 
be exempted from restraint. 

In fact, religion and morality, as they 
now stand, compose a practical code of 
misery and servitude : the genius of human 
happiness must tear every leaf from the 
accursed book of God ere man can read 
the inscription on his heart. How would 
morality, dressed up in stiff stays and 
finery, start from her own disgusting image 
should she look in the mirror of nature ! 



VI. — Page 46. 

To the red and baleful sun 
That faintly tiuinkles there. 

The north polar star, to which the axis of 
the earth, in its present state of obliquity, 
points. It is exceedingly probable, from 
many considerations, that this obliquity 
will gradually diminish, until the equator 
coincides with the ecliptic : the nights 
and days will then become equal on the 
earth throughout the year, and probably 
the seasons also. There is no great ex- 
travagance in presuming that the progress 
of the perpendicularity of the poles may 
be as rapid as the progress of intellect; 
or that there should be a perfect identity 
between the moral and physical improve- 
ment of the human species. It is certain 
that wisdom is not compatible with dis- 
ease, and that, in the present state of the 
climates of the earth, health, in the true 
and comprehensive sense of the word, is 
out of the reach of civilized man. As- 
tronomy teaches us that the earth is now 
in its progress, and that the poles are 
every year becoming more and more per- 
pendicular to the ecliptic. The strong 
evidence afforded by the history of my- 
thology, and geological researches, that 
some event of this nature has taken place 



68 



NOTES TO QUEEN MAB. 



already, affords a strong presumption that 
this progress is not merely an oscillation, 
as has been surmised by some late astron- 
omers.^ Bones of animals peculiar to 
the torrid zone have been found in the 
north of Siberia, and on the banks of the 
river Ohio. Plants have been found in 
the fossil state in the interior of Germany, 
which demand the present climate of 
Hindostan for their production.'^ The 
researches of M. Bailly^ establish the 
existence of a people who inhabited a 
tract in Tartary 49° north latitude, of 
greater antiquity than either the Indians, 
the Chinese, or the Chaldeans, from whom 
these nations derived their sciences and 
theology. We find, from the testimony 
of ancient writers, that Britain, Germany, 
and France were much colder than at 
present, and that their great rivers were 
annually frozen over. Astronomy teaches 
us also that since this period the obliquity 
of the earth's position has been consid- 
erably diminished. 

VI. — Page 48. 

No atom of this turbulence fulfils 
A vague and unnecessitated task, 
Or acts but as it t?iust and ought to act. 

* * Deux exemples serviront a nous rendre 
plus sensible le principe qui vient d'etre 
pose; nous emprunterons I'une du phy- 
sique et I'autre du moral. Dans un tour- 
billon de poussiere qu'eleve un vent im- 
petueux, quelque confus qu'il paraisse a 
nos yeux; dans la plus aff reuse tempete 
excitee par des vents opposes qui sou- 
levent les flots, il n'y a pas une seule 
molecule de poussiere ou d'eau qui soit 
placee au hasard, qui n'ait sa cause suffi- 
sante pour occuper le lieu ou elle se 
trouve, et qui n'agisse rigoureusement de 
la maniere dont elle doit agir. Une 
geometre qui connaitrait exactement les 
diff^rentes forces qui agissent dans ces 
deux cas, et les propriet^s des molecules 
qui sont mues, demontrerait que d'apres 
des causes donnees, chaque molecule agit 

^ Laplace, Systhne du Mottde. 

* Cabanis, Rapports du Physique et du Moral 
de V H online 1 vol. ii. p. 406. 

3 Bailly, Lettres sur les Sciences, a Voltaire. 



precisement comme elle doit agir, et ne 
peut agir autrement qu'elle ne fait. 

Dans les convulsions terribles qui 
agitent quelquefois les societes politiques, 
et qui produisent souvent le renverse- 
ment d'un empire, il n'y a pas une seule 
action, une seule parole, une seule pen- 
see, une seule volonte, une seule passion 
dans les agens qui concourent a la revo- 
lution comme destructeurs ou comme vic- 
times, qui ne soit necessaire, qui n'agisse 
comme elle doit agir, qui n'opere infal- 
liblement les effets qu'elle doit operer, 
suivant la place qu'occupent ces agens 
dans ce tourbillon moral. Cela parai- 
trait evident pour une intelligence qui 
serait en etat de saisir et d'apprecier 
toutes les actions et reactions des esprits 
et des corps de ceux qui contribuent a 
cette revolution." — Systeme de la Na- 
ture, vol. i. p. 44. 

VI. — Page 48. 

Necessity ! thou mother of the world! 

He who asserts the doctrine of Neces- 
sity means that, contemplating the events 
which compose the moral and material 
universe, he beholds only an immense 
and uninterrupted chain of causes and 
effects, no one of which could occupy 
any other place than it does occupy, or 
act in any other place than it does act. 
The idea of necessity is obtained by our 
experience of the connection between 
objects, the uniformity of the operations 
of nature, the constant conjunction of 
similar events, and the consequent in- 
ference of one from the other. Man- 
kind are therefore agreed in the admis- 
sion of necessity, if they admit that 
these two circumstances take place in 
voluntary action. Motive is to voluntary 
action in the human mind what cause is 
to effect in the material universe. The 
word liberty, as applied to mind, is anal- 
ogous to the word chance as applied to 
matter : they spring from an ignorance 
of the certainty of the conjunction of 
antecedents and consequents. 

Every human being is irresistibly im- 
pelled to act precisely as he does act: 



NOTES TO QUEEN MAB. 



69 



in the eternity which preceded his birth 
a chain of causes was generated, which, 
operating under the name of motives, 
make it impossible that any thought of 
his mind, or any action of his life, should 
be otherwise than it is. Were the doc- 
trine of Necessity false, the human mind 
would no longer be a legitimate object of 
science; from like causes it would be in 
vain that we should expect like effects; 
the strongest motive would no longer be 
paramount over the conduct; all knowl- 
edge would be vague and undetermi- 
nate; we could not predict with any cer- 
tainty that we might not meet as an 
enemy to-morrow him with whom we 
have parted in friendship to-night; the 
most probable inducements and the clear- 
est reasonings would lose the invariable 
influence they possess. The contrary of 
this is demonstrably the fact. Similar 
circumstances produce the same unvaria- 
ble effects. The precise character and 
motives of any man on any occasion 
being given, the moral philosopher could 
predict his actions with as much cer- 
tainty as the natural philosopher could 
predict the effects of the mixture of any 
particular chemical substances. Why is 
the aged husbandman more experienced 
than the young beginner ? Because there 
is a uniform, undeniable necessity in 
the operations of the material universe. 
Why is the old statesman more skilful 
than the raw politician? Because, rely- 
ing on the necessary conjunction of 
motive and action, he proceeds to pro- 
duce moral effects, by the application of 
those moral causes which experience has 
shown to be effectual. Some actions 
may be found to which we can attach no 
motives, but these are the effects of 
causes with which we are unacquainted. 
Hence the relation which motive bears 
to voluntary action is that of cause to 
effect; nor, placed in this point of view, 
is it, or ever has it been, the subject of 
popular or philosophical dispute. None 
but the few fanatics who are engaged in 
the herculean task of reconciling the 
justice of their God with the misery of 
man, will longer outrage common sense 
by the supposition of an event without 



a cause, a voluntary action without a 
motive. History, politics, morals, criti- 
cism, all grounds of reasonings, all prin- 
ciples of science, alike assume the truth 
of the doctrine of Necessity. No farmer 
carrying his corn to market doubts the 
sale of it at the market price. The 
master of a manufactory no more doubts 
that he can purchase the human labor 
necessary for his purposes than that his 
machinery will act as they have been 
accustomed to act. 

But, whilst none have scrupled to ad- 
mit necessity as influencing matter, many 
have disputed its dominion over mind. 
Independently of its militating with the 
received ideas of the justice of God, it is 
by no means obvious to a superficial in- 
quiry. When the mind observes its own 
operations, it feels no connection of mo- 
tive and action : but as we know " noth- 
ing more of causation than the constant 
conjunction of objects and the conse- 
quent inference of one from the other, 
as we find that these two circumstances 
are universally allowed to have place 
in voluntary action, we may be easily 
led to own that they are subjected to 
the necessity common to all causes." 
The actions of the will have a regular 
conjunction with circumstances and char- 
acters; motive is to voluntary action 
what cause is to effect. But the only 
idea we can form of causation is a con- 
stant conjunction of similar objects, and 
the consequent inference of one from the 
other: wherever this is the case necessity 
is clearly established. 

The idea of liberty, applied metaphor- 
ically to the will, has sprung from a mis- 
conception of the meaning of the word 
power. What is power? — id quod po- 
test, that which can produce any given 
effect. To deny power is to say that 
nothing can or has the power to be or 
act. In the only true sense of the word 
power, it applies with equal force to the 
loadstone as to the human will. Do you 
think these motives, which I shall pre- 
sent, are powerful enough to rouse him? 
is a question just as common as, Do you 
think this lever has the power of raising 
this weight? The advocates of free-will 



70 



NOTES TO QUEEN MAB. 



assert that the will has the power of re- 
fusing to be determined by the strongest 
motive : but the strongest motive is that 
which, overcoming all others, ultimately 
prevails; this assertion therefore amounts 
to a denial of the will being ultimately 
determined by that motive which does 
determine it, which is absurd. But it is 
equally certain that a man cannot resist 
the strongest motive as that he cannot 
overcome a physical impossibility. 

The doctrine of Necessity tends to in- 
troduce a great change into the estab- 
lished notions of morality, and utterly to 
destroy religion. Reward and punish- 
ment must be considered, by the Neces- 
sarian, merely as motives which he would 
employ in order to procure the adoption 
or abandonment of any given line of 
conduct. Desert, in the present sense 
of the word, would no longer have any 
meaning; and he who should inflict pain 
upon another for no better reason than 
that he deserved it, would only gratify 
his revenge under pretence of satisfy- 
ing justice. It is not enough, says the 
advocate of free-will, that a criminal 
should be prevented from a repetition of 
his crime: he should feel pain, and his 
torments, when justly inflicted, ought 
precisely to be proportioned to his fault. 
But utility is morality; that which is in- 
capable of producing happiness is useless; 
and though the crime of Damiens must 
be condemned, yet the frightful torments 
which revenge, under the name of jus- 
tice, inflicted on this unhappy man can- 
not be supposed to have augmented, 
even at the long run, the stock of pleas- 
urable sensation in the world. At the 
same time, the doctrine of Necessity does 
not in the least diminish our disapproba- 
tion of vice. The conviction which all 
feel that a viper is a poisonous animal, 
and that a tiger is constrained, by the 
inevitable condition of his existence, to 
devour men, does not induce us to avoid 
them less sedulously, or, even more, to 
hesitate in destroying them : but he 
would surely be of a hard heart who, 
meeting with a serpent on a desert island, 
or in a situation where it was incapable 
of injury, should wantonly deprive it of 



existence. A Necessarian is inconse- 
quent to his own principles if he indulges 
in hatred or contempt; the compassion 
which he feels for the criminal is unmixed 
with a desire of injuring him : he looks 
with an elevated and dreadless compo- 
sure upon the links of the universal chain 
as they pass before his eyes; whilst cow- 
ardice, curiosity, and inconsistency only 
assail him in proportion to the feeble- 
ness and indistinctness with which he has 
perceived and rejected the delusions of 
free-will. 

Religion is the perception of the re- 
lation in which we stand to the principle 
of the universe. But if the principle of 
the universe be not an organic being, the 
model and prototype of man, the relation 
between it and human beings is abso- 
lutely none. Without some insight into 
its will respecting our actions religion is 
nugatory and vain. But will is only a 
mode of animal mind; moral qualities 
also are such as only a human being can 
possess; to attribute them to the princi- 
ple of the universe is to annex to it 
properties incompatible with any possible 
definition of its nature. It is probable 
that the word God was originally only 
an expression denoting the unknown 
cause of the known events which men 
perceived in the universe. By the vulgar 
mistake of a metaphor for a real being, 
of a word for a thing, it became a man, 
endowed with human qualities and 
governing the universe as an earthly 
monarch governs his kingdom. Their 
addresses to this imaginary being, indeed, 
are much in the same style as those of 
subjects to a king. They acknowledge 
his benevolence, deprecate his anger, and 
supplicate his favor. 

But the doctrine of Necessity teaches 
us that in no case could any event have 
happened otherwise than it did happen, 
and that, if God is the author of good, 
he is also the author of evil ; that, if he 
is entitled to our gratitude for the one, 
he is entitled to our hatred for the other; 
that, admitting the existence of this hypo- 
thetic being, he is also subjected to the 
dominion of an immutable necessity. It 
is plain that the same arguments which 



NOTES 7X> QUEEN MAB. 



7i 



prove that God is the author of food, 
light, and life, prove him also to be the 
author of poison, darkness, and death. 
The wide-wasting earthquake, the storm, 
the battle, and the tyranny, are attribu- 
table to this hypothetic being in the same 
degree as the fairest forms of nature, sun- 
shine, liberty, and peace. 

But we are taught, by the doctrine of 
Necessity, that there is neither good nor 
evil in the universe, otherwise than as the 
events to which we apply these epithets 
have relation to our own peculiar mode 
of being. Still less than with the hy- 
pothesis of a God will the doctrine of 
Necessity accord with the belief of a 
future state of punishment. God made 
man such as he is, and then damned 
him for being so; for to say that God 
was the author of all good, and man 
the author of all evil, is to say that one 
man made a straight line and a crooked 
one, and another man made the incon- 
gruity. 

A Mahometan story, much to the 
present purpose, is recorded, wherein 
Adam and Moses are introduced disput- 
ing before God in the following manner. 
Thou, says Moses, art Adam, whom God 
created, and animated with the breath of 
life, and caused to be worshipped by the 
angels, and placed in Paradise, from 
whence mankind have been expelled for 
thy fault. Whereto Adam answered, 
Thou art Moses, whom God chose for 
his apostle, and intrusted with his word, 
by giving thee the tables of the law, and 
whom he vouchsafed to admit to dis- 
course with himself. How many years 
dost thou find the law was written before 
I was created? Says Moses, Forty. And 
dost thou not find, replied Adam, these 
words therein, And Adam rebelled against 
his Lord and transgressed ? Which Moses 
confessing, Dost thou therefore blame 
me, continued he, for doing that which 
God wrote of me that I should do, forty 
years before I was created, nay, for what 
was decreed concerning me fifty thou- 
sand years before the creation of heaven 
and earth? — Sale's Prelim. Disc, to the 
Koran, p. 164. 



VII. — Page 49. 

There is no God! 

This negation must be understood 
solely to affect a creative Deity. The 
hypothesis of a pervading Spirit coeteinal 
with the universe remains unshaken. 

A close examination of the validity ot 
the proofs adduced to support any propo- 
sition is the only secure way of attaining 
truth, on the advantages of which it ii, 
unnecessary to descant: our knowledge 
of the existence of a Deity is a subject oi 
such importance that it cannot be too 
minutely investigated; in consequence of 
this conviction we proceed briefly and 
impartially to examine the proofs which 
have been adduced. It is necessary first 
to consider the nature of behef. 

When a proposition is offered to the 
mind, it perceives the agreement or disa- 
greement of the ideas of which it is com- 
posed. A perception of their agreement 
is termed belief. Many obstacles fre- 
quently prevent this perception from 
being immediate; these the mind at- 
tempts to remove in order that the per- 
ception may be distinct. The mind is 
active in the investigation in order to 
perfect the state of perception of the 
relation which the component ideas of 
the proposition bear to each, which is 
passive : the investigation being confused 
with the perception has induced many 
falsely to imagine that the mind is active 
in belief, — that belief is an act of voli- 
tion, — in consequence of which it may 
be regulated by the mind. Pursuing, con- 
tinuing this mistake, they have attached 
a degree of criminaHty to disbelief; of 
which, in its nature, it is incapable: it is 
equally incapable of merit. 

Belief, then, is a passion, the strength 
of which, like every other passion, is in 
precise proportion to the degrees of ex- 
citement. 

The degrees of excitement are three. 

The senses are the sources of all knowl- 
edge to the mind; consequently their evi- 
dence claims the strongest assent. 

The decision of the mind, founded 



72 



NOTES TO QUEEN MAB. 



upon our own experience, derived from 
these sources, claims the next degree. 

The experience of others, which ad- 
dresses itself to the former one, occupies 
the lowest degree. 

(A graduated scale, on which should 
be marked the capabilities of propositions 
to approach to the test of the senses, 
would be a just barometer of the belief 
which ought to be attached to them.) 

Consequently no testimony can be ad- 
mitted which is contrary to reason ; reason 
is founded on the evidence of our senses. 

Every proof may be referred to one of 
these three divisions : it is to be considered 
what arguments we receive from each of 
them, which should convince us of the 
existence of a Deity. 

1st, The evidence of the senses. If 
the Deity should appear to us, if he should 
convince our senses of his existence, this 
revelation would necessarily command 
belief. Those to whom the Deity has 
thus appeared have the strongest possible 
conviction of his existence. But the 
God of Theologians is incapable of local 
visibility. 

2d, Reason. It is urged that man 
knows that whatever is must either have 
had a beginning, or have existed from 
all eternity : he also knows that whatever 
is not eternal must have had a cause. 
When this reasoning is applied to the 
universe, it is necessary to prove that it 
was created: until that is clearly demon- 
strated we may reasonably suppose that 
it has endured from all eternity. We 
must prove design before we can infer 
a designer. The only idea which we 
can form of causation is derivable from 
the constant conjunction of objects, and 
the consequent inference of one from the 
other. In a case where two propositions 
are diametrically opposite, the mind 
believes that which is least incompre- 
hensible; — it is easier to suppose that the 
universe has existed from all eternity 
than to conceive a being beyond its 
limits capable of creating it: if the 
mind sinks beneath the weight of one, 
is it an alleviation to increase the intoler- 
ability of the burden? 

The other argument, which is founded 



on a man's knowledge of his own exist- 
ence, stands thus. A man knows not 
only that he now is, but that once he 
was not; consequently there must have 
been a cause. But our idea of causation 
is alone derivable from the constant con- 
junction of objects and the consequent 
inference of one from the other; and, 
reasoning experimentally, we can only 
infer from effects causes exactly adequate 
to those effects. But there certainly is a 
generative power which is effected by 
certain instruments: we cannot prove 
that it is inherent in these instruments; 
nor is the contrary hypothesis capable of 
demonstration : we admit that the genera- 
tive power is incomprehensible; but to 
suppose that the same effect is produced 
by an eternal, omniscient, omnipotent 
being leaves the cause in the same ob- 
scurity, but renders it more incompre- 
hensible. 

3d, Testimony. It is required that 
testimony should not be contrary toreason. 
The testimony that the Deity convinces 
the senses of men of his existence can 
only be admitted by us if our mind con- 
siders it less probable that these men 
should have been deceived than that the 
Deity should have appeared to them. Our i 
reason can never admit the testimony of 
men, who not only declare that they were 
eye-witnesses of miracles, but that the 
Deity was irrational; for he commanded 
that he should be believed, he proposed 
the highest rewards for faith, eternal pun- 
ishments for disbelief. We can only 
command voluntary actions; belief is not 
an act of volition; the mind is even pas- 
sive, or involuntarily active; from this 
it is evident that we have no sufficient 
testimony, or rather that testimony is in- 
sufficient to prove the being of a God. It 
has been before shown that it cannot be 
deduced from reason. They alone, then, 
who have been convinced by the evidence 
of the senses can believe it. 

Hence it is evident that, having no 
proofs from either of the three sources of 
conviction, the mind cannot believe the 
existence of a creative God: it is also 
evident that, as belief is a passion of the 
mind, no degree of criminality is attach- 



NOTES TO QUEEN MAB. 



1^ 



able to disbelief; and that they only are 
reprehensible who neglect to remove the 
false medium through which their mind 
views any subject of discussion. Every 
reflecting mind must acknowledge that 
there is no proof of the existence of a 
Deity. 

God is an hypothesis, and, as such, 
stands in need of proof : the onus pr-obandi 
rests on the theist. Sir Isaac Newton 
says: Hypotheses nonjingo, quicquid enim 
ex phiznotnenis non dedncitur hypothesis 
vocatida est, et hypothesis vel metaphysicce, 
vel physic(2, vel qualitatuin occultarum, 
seu mechanicce, in philosophid locum 
nan habent. To all proofs of the 
existence of a creative God apply this 
valuable rule. We see a variety of bodies 
possessing a variety of powers : we merely 
know their effects; we are in a state of 
ignorance with respect to their essences 
and causes. These Newton calls the 
phenomena of things; but the pride of 
philosophy is unwilling to admit its igno- 
rance of their causes. From the phe- 
nomena, which are the objects of our 
senses, we attempt to infer a cause, which 
we call God, and gratuitously endow it 
with all negative and contradictory quali- 
ties. From this hypothesis we invent 
this general name, to conceal our igno- 
rance of causes and essences. The being 
called God by no means answers with 
the conditions prescribed by Newton; it 
bears every mark of a veil woven by phil- 
osophical conceit, to hide the ignorance 
of philosophers even from themselves. 
They borrow the threads of its texture 
from the anthropomorphism of the vulgar. 
Words have been used by sophists for 
the same purposes, from the occult qual- 
ities of the peripatetics to the effluvium 
of Boyle and the crinities or nebulce of 
Herschel. God is represented as infinite, 
eternal, incomprehensible ; he is contained 
under every predicate in non that the logic 
of ignorance could fabricate. Even his 
worshippers allow that it is impossible to 
Iform any idea of him : they exclaim with 
ithe French poet, 

Pour dire ce qu'il est^ il faute itre lui- 
mime. 



Lord Bacon says that atheism leaves 
to man reason, philosophy, natural piety, 
laws, reputation, and everything that can 
serve to conduct him to virtue; but super- 
stition destroys all these, and erects itself 
into a tyranny over the understandings of 
men: hence atheism never disturbs the 
government, but renders man more clear- 
sighted, since he sees nothing beyond the 
boundaries of the present life. — Bacon's 
Moral Essays. 

La premiere theologie de I'homme lui 
fit d'abord craindre et adorer les ele- 
rnents meme, des objets materiels et gros- 
siers; il rendit ensuite ses hommages a 
des agents presidents aux elements, a des 
genies inferieurs, a des heros, ou a des 
hommes doues de grandes qualites. A 
force de reflechir il crut simplifier les 
choses en soumettant la nature entiere 
a un seul agent, a une intelligence 
souveraine, a un esprit, a une ame uni- 
verselle, qui mettait cette nature et ses 
parties en mouvement. En remontant 
de causes en causes, les mortels ont fini 
par ne rien voir; et c'est dans cette ob- 
scurite qu'ils ont place leur Dieu; c'est 
dans cette abime tenebreux que leur 
imagination inquiete travaille toujours 4 
se fabriquer des chimeres, que les affli- 
geront jusqu'a ce que la connaissance de 
la nature les detrompe des fantomes 
qu'ils ont toujours si vainement adores. 

Si nous voulons nous rendre compte 
de nos idees sur la Divinite, nous serons 
obliges de convenir que, par le mot Dieu, 
les hommes n'ont jamais pu designer que 
la cause la plus cachee, la plus eloignee, 
la plus inconnue des effets qu'ils voy- 
aient : ils ne font usage de ce mot, que 
lorsque le jeu des causes naturelles et 
connues cesse d'etre visible pour eux; 
des qu'ils perdent le fil de ces causes, ou 
des que leur esprit ne peut plus en suivre 
la chaine, ils tranchent leur difficulte, et 
terminent leurs recherches en appellant 
Dieu la derniere des causes, e'est-a-dire 
celle qui est au-dela de toutes les causes 
qu'ils connaissent; ainsi ils ne font 
qu'assigner une denomination vague a 
une cause ignoree, a laquelle leur paresse 
ou les bornes de leurs connaissances les 



74 



NOTES TO QUEEN MAS. 



forcent de s'arreter. Toutes les fois 
qu'on nous dit que Dieu est I'auteur de 
quelque phenomene, cela signifie qu'on 
ignore comment un tel phenomene a pu 
s'operer par le secours des forces ou des 
causes que nous connaissons dans la 
nature. C'est ainsi que le commun des 
hommes, dont I'ignorance est la partage, 
attribue a la Divinite non seulement les 
eftets inusites qui les frappent, mais 
encore les evenemens les plus simples, 
dont les causes sont les plus faciles a 
connaitre pour quiconque a pu les me- 
diter. En un mot, I'homme a toujours 
respecte les causes inconnues des effets 
surprenants, que son ignorance I'em- 
pechait de demeler. Ce fut sur les debris 
de la nature que les hommes eleverent le 
colosse imaginaire de la Divinite. 

Si I'ignorance de la nature donna la 
naissance aux dieux, la connaissance de 
la nature est faite pour les detruire. A 
mesure que I'homme s'instruit, ses forces 
et ses ressour;ces augmentent avec ses 
lumieres; les sciences, les arts conserva- 
teurs, I'industrie, lui fournissent des se- 
cours; I'experience le rassure ou lui 
procure des moyens de resister aux efforts 
de bien des causes qui cessent de I'alar- 
mer des qu'il les a connues. En un 
mot, ses terreurs se dissipent dans la 
meme proportion que son esprit s'eclaire. 
L'homme instruit cesse d'etre supersti- 
tieux. 

Ce n'est jamais que sur parole que des 
peuples entiers adorent le Dieu de leurs 
peres et de leurs pretres: I'autorite, la 
confiance, la soumission, et I'habitude 
leur tiennent lieu de conviction et de 
preuves; ils se prosternent et prient, 
parceque leurs peres leur ont appris a 
se prosterner et a prier: mais pourquoi 
ceux-ci se sont-ils mis h. genoux? C'est 
que dans les temps eloignes leurs legis- 
lateurs et leurs guides leur en ont fait un 
devoir. " Adorez et croyez," ont-ils dit, 
"des dieux que vous ne pouvez com- 
prendre; rapportez-vous-en a notre sa- 
gesse profonde; nous en savons plus que 
vous sur la divinite." Mais pourquoi 
m'en rapporterais-je k vous? C'est que 
Dieu le veut ainsi, c'est que Dieu vous 
punira si vous osez resister. Mais ce 



Dieu n'est-il done pas la chose en ques- 
tion? Cependant les hommes se soni 
toujours payes de ce cercle vicieux; la 
paresse de leur esprit leur fit trouver plus 
court de s'en rapporter au jugement des 
autres. Toutes les notions religieuses 
sont fondees uniquement sur I'autorite; 
toutes les religions du monde defendent 
I'examen et ne veulent pas que I'on rai- 
sonne; c'est I'autorite qui veut qu'on 
croie en Dieu; ce Dieu n'est lui-meme 
fonde que sur I'autorite de quelques 
hommes qui pretendent le connaitre, et 
venir de sa part pour I'annoncer a la 
terre. Un Dieu fait par les hommes, 
a sans doutes besoin des hommes pour 
se faire connaitre aux hommes. 

Ne serait-ce done que pour des pretres, 
des inspires, des metaphysiciens que serait 
reservee la conviction de I'existence d'un 
Dieu, que I'on dit neanmoins si necessaire 
a tout le genre humain? Mais trouvons- 
nous de I'harmonie entre les opinions 
theologiques des differents inspires, ou 
des penseurs repandus sur la terre ? Ccux 
meme que font profession d'adorer le 
meme Dieu, sont-ils d'accord sur son 
compte? Sont-ils contents des preuves 
que leurs collegues apportent de son exis- 
tence? Souscrivent-ils unanimement aux 
idees qu'ils presentent sur sa nature, sur 
sa conduite, sur la fa9on d 'entendre ses 
pretendus oracles? Est-il une contree sur 
la terre ou la science de Dieu se soit 
reellement perfectionnee? A-t-elle pris 
quelque part la consistence etl'uniformite 
que nous voyons prendre aux connais- 
sances humaines, aux arts les plus futiles, 
aux metiers les plus meprises? Ces moti 
d'espril AHmmaterialite, de criation, de 
predestination, de grace ; cette foule de 
distinctions subfiles dont la theologie s'est 
partout remplie dans quelques pays, ces 
inventions si ingenieuses, imaginees par 
des penseurs que se sont succedes depuis 
tant de siecles, n'ont fait, helas ! qu'em- 
brouiller les choses, et jamais la science la 
plus necessaire aux hommes n'a jusqu'ici 
pu acquerir la moindre fixite. Depuis 
des milliers d'annees ces reveurs oisifs se 
sont perpetuellement relayes pour meditei 
la Divinite , pour deviner ses voies cachees. 
pour inventer des hypotheses propres a 



NOTES TO QUEEN MAB. 



n 



developper cette enigme importante. 
Leur peu de succes n'a point decourage 
la vanite theologique; toujours on a parle 
deDieu: on s'est dispute, ons'est egorge 
pour lui, et cet etre sublime demeure 
toujours ie plus ignore et le plus discute. 

Les hommes auraient ete trop heureux, 
si, se bornant aux objets visibles qui les 
interessent, ils eussent employe a perfec- 
tionner leurs sciences reelles, leurs loix, 
leur morale, leur education, la moitie des 
efforts qu'ils ont mis dans leurs recherches 
sur la Divinite. Ils auraient ete bien 
plus sages encore, et plus fortunes, s'ils 
eussent pu consentir a laisser leurs guides 
desoeuvres se quereller entre eux, et sonder 
des profondeurs capables de les etourdir, 
sans se meler de leurs disputes insensees. 
Mais il est de I'essence de I'ignorance 
d'attacher de I'importance a ce qu!^lle ne 
comprend pas. La vanite humaine fait 
que I'espritse roidit contre des difficultes. 
Plus un objet se derobe a nos yeux, plus 
nous faisons d'efforts pour le saisir, parce- 
que des-lors il aiguillonne notre orgueil, 
il excite notre curiosite, il nous parait 
interessant. En combattant pour son 
Dieu chacun ne combattit en effet que 
pour les interets de sa propre vanite, qui 
de toutes les passions produites par la 
mal-organisation de la societe, est la plus 
prompte a s'allarmer, et la plus propre a 
produire de tres grandes folies. 

Si ecartant pour un moment les idees 
facheuses que la theologie nous donne 
d'un Dieu capricieux, dont les decrets 
partiaux et despotiques decident du sort 
des humains, nous ne voulons fixer nos 
yeux que sur la bonte pretendue, que 
tous les hommes, meme en tremblant 
devant ce Dieu, s'accordent a lui donner; 
si nous lui supposons le projet qu'on lui 
prete, de n'avoir travaille que pour sa 
propre gloire, d'exiger les hommages des 
6tres intelligents; de ne chercher dans ses 
oeuvres que le bien-etre du genre humain; 
comment concilier ces vues et ces dis- 
positions avec I'ignorance vraiment in- 
vincible dans laquelle ce Dieu, si gloricux 
et si bon, laisse la plupart des hommes 
sur son compte? Si Dieu veut etre 
connu, cheri, remercie, que ne se montre- 
t-il sous des traits favorables a tous ces 



etres intelligents dont il veut etre aime et 
adore ? Pourquoi ne point se manifester a 
toute la terre d'une fa^on non equivoque, 
bien plus capable de nous convaincre 
que ces revelations particulieres qui sem- 
blent accuser la Divinite d'une partialite 
facheuse pour quelqu'unes de ses crea- 
tures? Le tout-puissant n'aurait-il done 
pas des moyens plus convainquants de se 
montrer aux hommes que ces metamor- 
phoses ridicules, ces incarnations preten- 
dues, qui nous sont attestees par des 
ecrivains si peu d'accord entre eux dans 
les recits qu'ils en font? Au lieu de tant 
de miracles, inventes pour prouver la 
mission divine de tant de legislateurs 
reveres par les differents peuples du 
monde, le souverain des esprits ne pou- 
vait-il pas convaincre tout d'un coup 
I'esprit humain des choses qu'il a voulu 
lui faire connaitre ? Au lieu de suspendre 
un soleil dans la voute du firmament; au 
lieu de repandre sans ordre les etoiles et 
les constellations qui remplissent I'espace, 
n'eut-il pas ete plus conforme aux vues 
d'un Dieu si jaloux de sa gloire et si bien- 
intentionne pour I'homme; d'ecrire d'une 
fa9on non sujette a dispute, son nom, ses 
attributs, ses volontes permanentes en 
caracteres ineffa9ables, et lisibles egale- 
ment pour tous les habitants de la terre? 
Personne alors n'aurait pu douter de 
I'existence d'un Dieu, de ses volontes 
claires, de ses intentions visibles. Sous 
les yeux de ce Dieu si terrible, personne 
n'aurait eu I'audace de violer ses ordon- 
nances; nul mortel n'eut ose se mettre 
dans le cas d'attirer sa colere: enfin nul 
homme n'eut eu le front d'en imposer en 
son nom, ou d'interpreter ses volontes 
suivant ses propres fantaisies. 

En effet, quand meme on admettrait 
I'existence du Dieu theologique et la 
realite des attributs si discordants qu'on 
lui donne, I'on ne peut en rien conclure, 
pour autoriser la conduite ou les cultes 
qu'on prescrit de lui rendre. La 
theologie est vraiment le toiineaii des 
Dajia'ides. A force de qualites contra- 
dictoires et d'assertions hasardees, elle a, 
pour ainsi dire, tellement garrotte son 
Dieu qu'elle I'a mis dans I'impossibilite 
d'agir. S'il est infiniment bon, quelle 



76 



NOTES TO QUEEN MAB. 



raison aurions-nous de le craindre? S'il 
est infiniment sage, de quoi nous inquieter 
sur notre sort? S'il sait tout, pourquoi 
I'avertir de nos besoins, et le fatiguer de 
nos prieres? S'il est partout, pourquoi 
lui elever des temples? S'il est maitre 
de tout, pourquoi lui faire des sacrifices 
et des offrandes? S'il est juste, com- 
ment croire qu'il punisse des creatures 
qu'il a remplies de faiblesses ? Si la grace 
fait tout en elles, quelle raison aurait-il 
de les recompenser? S'il est tout-puis- 
sant, comment I'offenser, comment lui 
resister? S'il est raisonnable, comment 
se mettrait-il en colere contre des aveu- 
gles, a qui il a laisse la liberie de 
deraisonner? S'il est immuable, de quel 
droit pretendrions-nous faire changer ses 
decrets? S'il est inconcevable, pour- 
quoi nous en occuper? S'IL A PARLE, 
POURQUOI L'UNIVERS N'EST-IL 
PAS CONVAINCU? Si la connaissance 
d'un Dieu est la plus necessaire, pour- 
quoi n'est-elle pas la plus evidente et la 
plus claire ? — Systeme de la Nature^ par 
M. Mirabaud {^zxoii d'Holbach), Lon- 
don, 1 78 1. 



The enlightened and benevolent Pliny 
thus publicly professes himself an atheist : 
— Quapropter efifigiem Dei formamque 
quaerere imbecillitatis humange reor. 
Quisquis est Deus, si modo est alius, 
et quacumque in parte, totus est sensus, 
totus est visus, totus auditus, totus animae, 
totus animi, totus sui. . . . Imperfectse 
vero in homine naturae praecipua solatia 
ne deum quidem posse omnia. Namque 
nee sibi potest mortem consciscere, si 
velit, quod homini dedit optimum in 
tantis vitae pcenis: nee mortales seter- 
nitate donare, aut revocare defunctos; 
nee facere ut qui vixit non vixerit, qui 
honores gessit non gesserit, nullumque 
habere in praeterita jus, praeterquam 
oblivionis, atque (u\; facetis quoque argu- 
mentis societas haec cum deo copuletur) 
ut bis dena viginti non sint, ac multa 
similiter efficere non posse : per quae 
declaratur haud dubie naturae potentiam 
idque esse quod Deum vocamus. — Plin. 
Nat. Hist. II. cap. 7 (de Deo). 



The consistent Newtonian is necessa- 
rily an atheist. See Sir W. Drummond'S 
"Academical Questions," chap. iii. — 
Sir W. seems to consider the atheism 
to which it leads as a sufficient presump- 
tion of the falsehood of the system of 
gravitation; but surely it is more consist- 
ent with the good faith of philosophy 
to admit a deduction from facts than an 
hypothesis incapable of proof, although 
it might militate with the obstinate pre- 
conceptions of the mob. Had this au- 
thor, instead of inveighing against the 
guilt and absurdity of atheism, demon- 
strated its falsehood, his conduct would 
have been more suited to the modesty 
of the sceptic and the toleration of the 
philosopher. 

Omnia enim per Dei potentiam facta 
sunt. O imo quia naturae potentia nulla est 
nisi ipsa Dei potentia, certum est nos 
eatenus Dei potentiam non intelligere, 
quatenus causas naturales ignoramus; 
adeoque stulte ad eandem Dei potentiam 
recurritur, quando rei alicujus, causam 
naturalem, hoc est, ipsam Dei potentiam 
ignoramus. — Spinoza, Tract. Theologico- 
Pol. cap. i. p. 14. 

VII. — Page 49. 

Ahasuerus, rise ! 

"Ahasuerus thejew crept forth from the 
dark cave of Mount Carmel. Near two 
thousand years have elapsed since he was 
first goaded by never-ending restlessness 
to rove the globe from pole to pole. When 
our Lord was wearied with the burden 
of his ponderous cross, and wanted to rest 
before the door of Ahasuerus, the unfeel- 
ing wretch drove him away with brutality. 
The Saviour of mankind staggered, sink- 
ing under the heavy load, but uttered no 
complaint. An angel of death appeared 
before Ahasuerus, and exclaimed indig- 
nantly, ' Barbarian ! thou hast denied rest 
to the Son of man : be it denied thee also, 
until he comes to judge the world.' 

" A black demon, let loose from hell 
upon Ahasuerus, goads him now from 
country to country; he is denied the conso- 
lation which death affords, and precluded 
from the rest of the peaceful grave. 



NOTES TO QUEEN MAB. 



77 



" Ahasuerus crept forth from the dark 
cave of Mount Carmel — he shook the 
dust from his beard — and taking up one 
of the skulls heaped there hurled it down 
the eminence : it rebounded from the earth 
in shivered atoms. This was my father ! 
roared Ahasuerus. Seven more skulls 
rolled down from rock to rock; while the 
infuriate Jew, following them with ghastly 
looks, exclaimed — And these were my 
wives ! He still continued to hurl down 
skull after skull, roaring in dreadful ac- 
cents — ' And these, and these, and these 
were my children ! They could die ; but 
I, reprobate wretch, alas ! I cannot die ! 
Dreadful beyond conception is the judg- 
ment that hangs over me. Jerusalem 
fell — I crushed the sucking babe, and 
precipitated myself into the destructive 
flames. I cursed the Romans — but, 
alas ! alas ! the restless curse held me by 
the hair, — and I could not die ! 

"'Rome the giantess fell — I placed 
myself before the falling statue — she fell 
and did not crush me. Nations sprang up 
and disappeared before me; — but I re- 
mained and did not die. From cloud- 
encircled cliffs did I precipitate myself 
into the ocean; but the foaming billows 
cast me upon the shore, and the burning 
arrow of existence pierced my cold heart 
again. I leaped into Etna's flaming 
abyss, and roared with the giants for ten 
long months, polluting with my groans 
the Mount's sulphureous mouth — ah ! 
ten long months ! The volcano fermented, 
and in a fiery stream of lava cast me up. 
I lay torn by the torture-snakes of hell 
amid the glowing cinders, and yet contin- 
ued to exist. — A forest was on fire: I 
darted on wings of fury and despair into 
the crackling wood. Fire dropped upon 
me from the trees, but the flames only 
singed my limbs; alas ! it could not con- 
suiTjie them. — I now mixed with the 
butchers of mankind, and plunged in the 
tempest of the raging battle. I roared 
defiance to the infuriate Gaul, defiance 
to the victorious German; but arrows and 
spears rebounded in shivers from my body. 
The Saracen's flaming sword broke upon 
my skull; balls in vain hissed upon me; 
the lightnings of battle glared harmless 



around my loins; in vain did the elephant 
trample on me, in vain the iron hoof of 
the wrathful steed ! The mine, big with 
destructive power, burst upon me, and 
hurled me high in the air — I fell on heaps 
of smoking limbs, but was only singed. 
The giant's steel club rebounded from my 
body; the executioner's hand could not 
strangle me, the tiger's tooth could not 
pierce me, nor would the hungry lion in 
the circus devour me. I cohabited with 
poisonous snakes, and pinched the red 
crest of the dragon. — The serpent stung, 
but could not destroy me. The dragon 
tormented, but dared not to devour me. 
— I now provoked the fury of tyrants : 
I said to Nero, Thou art a bloodhound ! 
I said to Christiern, Thou art a blood- 
hound ! I said to Muley Ismail, Thou art 
a bloodhound! — The tyrants invented 

cruel torments, but did not kill me. 

Ha! not to be able to die — not 



to be able to die — not to be permitted to 
rest after the toils of life — to be doomed 
to be imprisoned forever in the clay- 
formed dungeon — to be forever clogged 
with this worthless body, its load of dis- 
eases and infirmities — to be condemned 
to [bejhold for millenniums that yawning 
monster Sameness, and Time, that hun- 
gry hyena, ever bearing children, and ever 
devouring again her offspring ! — Ha ! not 
to be permitted to die ! Awful avenger 
in heaven, hast thou in thine armory of 
wrath a punishment more dreadful? then 
let it thunder upon me, command a hur- 
ricane to sweep me down to the foot of 
Carmel, that I there may lie extended; 
may pant, and writhe, and die !" 

This fragment is the translation of part 
of some German work, whose title I have 
vainly endeavored to discover. I picked 
it up, dirty and torn, some years ago, in 
Lincoln's-Inn Fields. 

VH. — Page 50. 

/ zvill beget a son, and he shall bear 
The sins of all the xvorld. 

A book is put into our hands when 
children, called the Bible, the purport of 
whose history is briefly this: That God 
made the earth in six days, and there 



78 



NOTES TO QUEEN MAB. 



planted a delightful garden, in which he 
placed the first pair of human beings. In 
the midst of the garden he planted a tree, 
whose fruit, although within their reach, 
they were forbidden to touch. That the 
Devil, in the shape of a snake, persuaded 
them to eat of this fruit ; in consequence of 
which God condemned both them and 
their posterity yet unborn to satisfy his 
justice by their eternal misery. That, four 
thousand years after these events (the 
human race in the meanwhile having gone 
unredeemed to perdition), God engen- 
dered with the betrothed wife of a carpen- 
ter in Judea (whose virginity was never- 
theless uninjured), and begat a son, whose 
name was Jesus Christ; and who was cru- 
cified and died, in order that no more men 
might be devoted to hell-fire, he bearing 
the burden of his Father's displeasure by 
proxy. The book states, in addition, that 
the soul of whoever disbelieves this sac- 
rifice will be burned with everlasting fire. 

During many ages of misery and dark- 
ness this story gained implicit belief; but 
at length men arose who suspected that 
it was a fable and imposture, and that 
Jesus Christ, so far from being a god, was 
only a man like themselves. But a nu- 
merous set of men, who derived and still 
derive immense emoluments from this 
opinion, in the shape of a popular belief, 
told the vulgar that if they did not believe 
in the Bible they would be damned to all 
eternity; and burned, imprisoned, and 
poisoned all the unbiased and uncon- 
nected inquirers who occasionally arose. 
They still oppress them, so far as the 
people, now become more enlightened, 
will allow. 

The belief in all that the Bible con- 
tains is called Christianity. A Roman 
governor of Judea, at the instance of a 
priest-led mob, crucified a man called 
Jesus eighteen centuries ago. He was a 
man of pure life, who desired to rescue 
his countrymen from the tyranny of their 
barbarous and degrading superstitions. 
The common fate of all who desire to 
benefit mankind awaited him. The rab- 
ble, at the instigation of the priests, de- 
manded his death, although his very judge 
made public acknowledgment of his inno- 



cence. Jesus was sacrificed to the honor 
of that God with whom he was afterwards 
confounded. It is of importance, there- 
fore, to distinguish between the pretended 
character of this being as the Son of God 
and the Saviour of the world, and his real 
character as a man, who, for a vain at- 
tempt to reform the world, paid the for- 
feit of his life to that overbearing tyranny 
which has since so long desolated the uni- 
verse in his name. Whilst the one is 
a hypocritical demon, who announces 
himself as the God of compassion and 
peace, even whilst he stretches forth his 
blood-red hand with the sword of discord 
to waste the earth, having confessedly 
devised this scheme of desolation from 
eternity; the other stands in the foremost 
list of those true heroes who have died 
in the glorious martyrdom of liberty, and 
have braved torture, contempt, and pov- 
erty in the cause of suffering humanity.^ 

The vulgar, ever in extremes, became 
persuaded that the crucifixion of Jesus 
was a supernatural event. Testimonies 
of miracles, so frequent in unenlightened 
ages, were not wanting to prove that he 
was something divine. This belief, roll- 
ing through the lapse of ages, met with 
the reveries of Plato and the reasonings 
of Aristotle, and acquired force and ex- 
tent, until the divinity of Jesus became 
a dogma, which to dispute was death, 
which to doubt was infamy. 

Christianity is now the established 
religion : he who attempts to impugn it 
must be contented to behold murderers 
and traitors take precedence of him in 
public opinion: though, if his genius be 
equal to his courage, and assisted by a 
peculiar coalition of circumstances, future 
ages may exalt him to a divinity, and 
persecute others in his name, as he was 
persecuted in the name of his predecessor 
in the homage of the world. 

The same means that have supported 
every other popular belief have supported 
Christianity. War, imprisonment, assas- 
sination, and falsehood; deeds of unex- 
ampled and incomparable atrocity have 

^ Since writing this note I have some reason 
to suspect that Jesus was an ambitious man, who 
aspired to the throne of Judea. 



NOTES TO QUEEN MAB. 



79 



made it what it is. The blood shed by 
the votaries of the God of mercy and 
peace, since the establishment of his 
religion, would probably suffice to drown 
all other sectaries now on the habitable 
globe. We derive from our ancestors a 
faith thus fostered and supported: we 
quarrel, persecute, and hate for its main- 
tenance. Even under a government 
which, whilst it infringes the very right of 
thought and speech, boasts of permitting 
the liberty of the press, a man is pilloried 
and imprisoned because he is a deist, and 
no one raises his voice in the indignation 
of outraged humanity. But it is ever a 
proof that the falsehood of a proposition 
is felt by those who use coercion, not 
reasoning, to procure its admission; and 
a dispassionate observer would feel him- 
self more powerfully interested in favor 
of a man who, depending on the truth of 
his opinions, simply stated his reasons 
for entertaining them, than in that of 
his aggressor who, daringly avowing his 
unwillingness or incapacity to answer 
them by argument, proceeded to repress 
the energies and break the spirit of 
their promulgator by that torture and im- 
prisonment whose infliction he could 
command. 

Analogy seems to favor the opinion 
that as, like other systems, Christianity 
has arisen and augmented, so like them 
it will decay and perish; that as violence, 
darkness, and deceit, not reasoning and 
persuasion, have procured its admission 
among mankind, so, when enthusiasm 
has subsided, and time, that infallible 
controverter of false opinions, has in- 
volved its pretended evidences in the 
darkness of antiquity, it will become ob- 
solete; that Milton's poem alone will 
give permanency to the remembrance of 
its absurdities; and that men will laugh 
as heartily at grace, faith, redemption, 
and original sin, as they now do at the 
metamorphoses of Jupiter, the miracles 
of Romish saints, the efficacy of witch- 
craft, and the appearance of departed 
spirits. 

Had the Christian religion commenced 
and continued by the mere force of rea- 
soning and persuasion, the preceding 



analogy would be inadmissible. We 
should never speculate on the future 
obsoleteness of a system perfectly con- 
formable to nature and reason : it would 
endure so long as they endured; it 
would be a truth as indisputable as the 
light of the sun, the criminality of mur- 
der, and other facts, whose evidence, 
depending on our organization and rela- 
tive situations, must remain acknowl- 
edged as satisfactory so long as man is 
man. It is an incontrovertible fact, the 
consideration of which ought to repress 
the hasty conclusions of credulity, or 
moderate its obstinacy in maintaining 
them, that, had the Jews not been a 
fanatical race of men, had even the res- 
olution of Pontius Pilate been equal to 
his candor, the Christian religion never 
could have prevailed, it could not even 
have existed: on so feeble a thread hangs 
the most cherished opinion of a sixth of 
the human race ! When will the vulgar 
learn humility? When will the pride of 
ignorance blush at having believed before 
it could comprehend? 

Either the Christian religion is true, or 
it is false : if true, it comes from God, 
and its authenticity can admit of doubt 
and dispute no further than its omnipo- 
tent author is willing to allow. Either 
the power or the goodness of God is 
called in question, if he leaves those 
doctrines most essential to the well-being 
of man in doubt and dispute; the only 
ones which, since their promulgation, 
have been the subject of unceasing cavil, 
the cause of irreconcilable hatred. If 
God has spoken^ why is the universe not 
convinced? 

There is this passage in the Christian 
Scriptures: "Those who obey not God, 
and believe not the Gospel of his Son, 
shall be punished with everlasting de- 
struction." This is the pivot upon 
which all religions turn : they all assume 
that it is in our power to believe or not 
to believe; whereas the mind can only 
believe that which it thinks true. A 
human being can only be supposed ac- 
countable for those actions which are 
influenced by his will. But belief is 
utterly distinct from and unconnected 



8o 



NOTES TO QUEEN MAS. 



with volition: it is the apprehension of 
the agreement or disagreement of the 
ideas that compose any proposition. 
Belief is a passion, or involuntary opera- 
tion of the mind, and, like other pas- 
sions, its intensity is precisely propor- 
tionate to the degrees of excitement. 
Volition is essential to merit or demerit. 
But the Christian religion attaches the 
highest possible degrees of merit and de- 
merit to that vi^hich is worthy of neither, 
and which is totally unconnected with 
the peculiar faculty of the mind, whose 
presence is essential to their being. 

Christianity was intended to reform the 
world: had an all-wise Being planned it, 
nothing is more improbable than that it 
should have failed: omniscience would 
infallibly have foreseen the inutility of a 
scheme which experience demonstrates, 
to this age, to have been utterly unsuc- 
cessful. 

Christianity inculcates the necessity of 
supplicating the Deity. Prayer may be 
considered under two points of view; — 
as an endeavor to change the intentions 
of God, or as a formal testimony of our 
obedience. But the former case sup- 
poses that the caprices of a limited in- 
telligence can occasionally instruct the 
Creator of the world how to regulate the 
universe; and the latter, a certain de- 
gree of servility analogous to the loyalty 
demanded by earthly tyrants. Obedi- 
ence indeed is only the pitiful and cow- 
ardly egotism of him who thinks that he 
can do something better than reason. 

Christianity, like all other religions, 
rests upon miracles, prophecies, and 
martyrdoms. No religion ever existed 
which had not its prophets, its attested 
miracles, and, above all, crowds of dev- 
otees who would bear patiently the most 
horrible tortures to- prove its authen- 
ticity. It should appear that in no case 
can a discriminating mind subscribe to 
the genuineness of a miracle. A miracle 
is an infraction of nature's law, by a 
supernatural cause; by a cause acting 
beyond that eternal circle within which 
all things are included. God breaks 
through the law of nature, that he may 
convince mankind of the truth of that 



revelation which, in spite of his precau- 
tions, has been, since its introduction, 
the subject of unceasing schism and cavil. 

Miracles resolve themselves into the 
following question : ^ — Whether it is 
more probable the laws of nature, hith- 
erto so immutably harmonious, should 
have undergone violation, or that a man 
should have told a lie? Whether it is 
more probable that we are ignorant of 
the natural cause of an event, or that we 
know the supernatural one? That, in 
old times, when the powers of nature 
were less known than at present, a cer- 
tain set of men were themselves deceived, 
or had some hidden motive for deceiving 
others; or that God begat a son, who, 
in his legislation, measuring merit by be- 
lief, evidenced himself to be totally igno- 
rant of the powers of the human mind — 
of what is voluntary, and v.'hat is the con- 
trary ? 

We have many instances of men telling 
lies; — none of an infraction of nature's 
laws, those laws of whose government 
alone we have any knowledge or experi- 
ence. The records of all nations afford 
innumerable instances of men deceiving 
others either from vanity or interest, or 
themselves being deceived by the limited- 
ness of their views and their ignorance 
of natural causes; but where is the ac- 
credited case of God having come upon 
earth, to give the lie to his own creations? 
There would be something truly wonder- 
ful in the appearance of a ghost; but 
the assertion of a child that he saw one 
as he passed through the churchyard is 
universally admitted to be less miraculous. 

But even supposing that a man should 
raise a dead body to life before our eyes, 
and on this fact rest his claim to being 
considered the son of God; — the Hu- 
mane Society restores drowned persons, 
and because it makes no mystery of the 
method it employs, its members are not 
mistaken for the sons of God. All that we 
have a right to infer from our ignorance 
of the cause of any event is that we do 
not know it : had the Mexicans attended 
to this simple rule when they heard the 
cannon of the Spaniards, they would 
1 See Hume's Essays, vol. ii. p. 121. 



NOTES TO QUEEN MAB. 



not have considered them as gods : the 
experiments of motlern chemistry would 
have defied the wisest philosophers of 
ancient Greece and Rome to have ac- 
counted for them on natural principles. 
An author of strong common sense has 
observed that " a miracle is no miracle 
at second hand ;" he might have added 
that a miracle is no miracle in any case; 
for until we are acquainted with all natu- 
ral causes, we have no reason to imagine 
others. 

There remains to be considered an- 
other proof of Christianity — Prophecy. 
A book is written before a certain event, 
in which this event is foretold ; how 
could the prophet have foreknown it 
without inspiration? how could he have 
been inspired without God? The great- 
est stress is laid on the prophecies of 
Moses and Hosea on the dispersion of 
the Jews, and that of Isaiah concerning 
the coming of the Messiah. The proph- 
ecy of Moses is a collection of every 
possible cursing and blessing ; and it is 
so far from being marvellous that the one 
of dispersion should have been fulfilled, 
that it would have been more surprising 
if, out of all these, none should have 
taken effect. In Deuteronomy, chap, 
xxviii. ver. 64, where Moses explicitly 
foretells the dispersion, he states that 
they shall there serve gods of wood and 
stone: "And the Lord shall scatter thee 
among all people, from the one end of the 
earth even to the other, atid there thou 
shalt serve other gods ^ "which neither thou 
nor thy fathers have knoivn, even gods of 
xvood and stone.'''' The Jews are at this 
day remarkably tenacious of their re- 
ligion. Moses also declares that they 
shall be subjected to these curses for dis- 
obedience to his ritual : " And it shall 
come to pass if thou wilt not hearken 
unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to 
observe to do all the commandments 
and statutes which I command you this 
day, that all these curses shall come 
upon thee and overtake thee." Is this 
the real reason? The third, fourth, and 
fifth chapters of Hosea are a piece of 
immodest confession. The indelicate 
type might apply in a hundred senses to 



a hundred things. The fifty-third chap- 
ter of Isaiah is more explicit, yet it does 
not exceed in clearness the oracles of 
Delphos. The historical proof that 
Moses, Isaiah, and Hosea did write when 
they are said to have written is far from 
being clear and circumstantial. 

But prophecy requires proof in its 
character as a miracle ; we have no right 
to suppose that a man foreknew future 
events from God, until it is demonstrated 
that he neither could know them by his 
own exertions, nor that the writings 
which contain the prediction could pos- 
sibly have been fabricated after the event 
pretended to be foretold. It is more 
probable that writings, pretending to 
divine inspiration, should have been fab- 
ricated after the fulfilment of their pre- 
tended prediction than that they should 
have really been divinely inspired, when 
we consider that the latter supposition 
makes God at once the creator of the 
human mind and ignorant of its primary 
powers, particularly as we have number- 
less instances of false religions, and 
forged prophecies of things long past, 
and jio accredited case of God having 
conversed with men flirectly or indirectly. 
It is also possible that the description of 
an event might have foregone its occur- 
rence : but this is far from being a legiti- 
mate proof of a divine revelation, as 
many men, not pretending to the charac- 
ter of a prophet, have nevertheless, in 
this sense, prophesied. 

Lord Chesterfield was never yet taken 
for a prophet, even by a bishop, yet he 
uttered this remarkable prediction : " The 
despotic government of France is screwed 
up to the highest pitch ; a revolution is 
fast approaching ; that revolution, I am 
convinced, will be radical and sangui- 
nary." This appeared in the letters of 
the prophet long before the accomplish- 
ment of this wonderful prediction. Now, 
have these particulars come to pass, or 
have they not? If they have, how could 
the Earl have foreknown them without 
inspiration? If we admit the truth of 
the Christian religion on testimony such 
as this, we must admit, on the same 
strength of evidence, that God has af- 



82 



NOTES TO QUEEN MAR. 



fixed the highest rewards to belief, and 
the eternal tortures of the never-dying 
worm to disbelief, both of which have 
been demonstrated to be involuntary. 

The last proof of the Christian religion 
depends on the influence of the Holy 
Ghost. Theologians divide the influence 
of the Holy Ghost into its ordinary and 
extraordinary modes of operation. The 
latter is supposed to be that which in- 
spired the Prophets and Apostles ; and 
the former to be the grace of God, 
which summarily makes known the truth 
of his revelation to those whose mind 
is fitted for its reception by a submissive 
perusal of his word. Persons convinced 
in this manner can do anything but ac- 
count for their conviction, describe the 
time at which it happened, or the man- 
ner in which it came upon them. It is 
supposed to enter the mind by other chan- 
nels than those of the senses, and there- 
fore professes to be superior to reason 
founded on their experience. 

Admitting, however, the usefulness or 
possibility of a divine revelation, unless 
we demolish the foundations of all human 
knowledge, it is requisite that our reason 
should previously demonstrate its genu- 
ineness ; for, before we extinguish the 
steady ray of reason and common sense, 
it is fit that we should discover whether 
we cannot do without their assistance, 
whether or no there be any other which 
may suffice to guide us through the laby- 
rinth of life:* for, if a man is to be in- 
spired upon all occasions, if he is to be 
sure of a thing because he is sure, if the 
ordinary operations of the Spirit are not 
to be considered very extraordinary 
modes of demonstration, if enthusiasm is 
to usurp the place of proof, and madness 
that of sanity, all reasoning is superfluous. 
The Mahometan dies fighting for his 
prophet, the Indian immolates himself 
at the chariot-wheels of Brahma, the 
Hottentot worships an insect, the Negro 
a bunch of feathers, the Mexican sacri- 
fices human victims ! Their degree of 
conviction must certainly be very strong: 
it cannot arise from reasoning, it must 

1 See Locke's Essay on Huma7t Understand- 
ing, book iv. chap, xix., on Enthusiasm. 



from feelings, the reward of their pray- 
ers. If each of these should affirm, in 
opposition to the strongest possible ar- 
guments, that inspiration carried internal 
evidence, I fear their inspired brethren, 
the orthodox Missionaries, would be so 
uncharitable as to pronounce them ob- 
stinate. 

Miracles cannot be received as testi- 
monies of a disputed fact, because all 
human testimony has ever been insuf- 
ficient to establish the possibility of mira- 
cles. That which is incapable of proof 
itself is no proof of anything else. 
Prophecy has also been rejected by the 
test of reason. Those, then, who have 
been actually inspired are the only true 
believers in the Christian religion. 

Mox numine viso 
Virginei tumuere sinus, innuptaque mater 
Arcano stupuit compleri viscera partu, 
Auctorem paritura suum. Mortalia corda 
Artificem texere poli, latuitque sub uno 
Pectore, qui totum late complectitur 
orbem. 
Claudian, Carmen Paschale. 

Does not so monstrous and disgusting 
an absurdity carry its own infamy and 
refutation with itself? 

VIII. — Page 56. 

Him, still from hope to hope the bliss 

piirstiing, 
IVhichfrom the exhaustless lore of human 

weal 
Draws on the virtuous mitid, the thoughts 

that rise 
In time-destroying infiniteness, gift 
IVith self-enshrijied eternity, etc. 

Time is our consciousness of the suc- 
cession of ideas in our mind. Vivid 
sensation, of either pain or pleasure, 
makes the time seem long, as the com- 
mon phrase is, because it renders us more 
acutely conscious of our ideas. If a mind 
be conscious of an hundred ideas during 
one minute, by the clock, and of two 
hundred during another, the latter of 
these spaces would actually occupy so 
much greater extent in the mind as two 
exceed one in quantity. If, therefore, 



NOTES TO QUEEN MAB. 



83 



^ the human mind, by any future improve- 
ment of its sensibility, should become 

\ conscious of an infinite number of ideas 
in a minute, that minute would be eter- 
nity. I do not hence infer that the 
actual space between the birth and death 
of a man will ever be prolonged; but 
that his sensibility is perfectible, and that 
the number of ideas which his mind is 
capable of receiving is indefinite. One 
man is stretched on the rack during 
twelve hours; another sleeps soundly in 
his bed : the difference of time perceived 
by these two persons is immense; one 
hardly will believe that half an hour has 
elapsed, the other could credit that cen- 
turies had flown during his agony. Thus, 
the life of a man of virtue and talent, 
who should die in his thirtieth year, is, 
with regard to his own feelings, longer 
than that of a miserable priest-ridden 
slave, who dreams out a century of dul- 

) ness. The one has perpetually cultivated 

[ his mental faculties, has rendered himself 
master of his thoughts, can abstract and 
generalize amid the lethargy of every-day 
business; — the other can slumber over 
the brightest moments of his being, and 
is unable to remember the happiest hour 

} of his life. Perhaps the perishing ephem- 
eron enjoys a longer life than the tortoise. 

Dark flood of time ! 
Roll as it listeth thee — I measure not 
By months or moments thy ambiguous 

course. 
Another may stand by me on the brink 
And watch the bubble whirled beyond 

his ken 
That pauses at my feet. The sense of 

love. 
The thirst for action, and the impassioned 

thought 
Prolong my being: if I wake no more. 
My life more actual living will contain 
Than some gray veteran's of the world's 

cold school, 
Whose listless hours unprofitably roll, 
By one enthusiast feeling unredeemed. 

See Godwin's Pol. Jus. vol. i. p. 411; 
and Condorcet, Esqiiisse cPuu Tableau 
Historiqiie des Progr^s de V Esprit Hu- 
main, epoque ix. 



Vni. — Page 56. 

No longer now 
Ne slays the lamb that looks him in the face. 

I hold that the depravity of the physical 
and moral nature of man originated in 
his unnatural habits of Hfe. The origin 
of man, like that of the universe of which 
he is a part, is enveloped in impenetrable 
mystery. His generations either had a 
beginning, or they had not. The weight 
of evidence in favor of each of these 
suppositions seems tolerably equal; and 
it is perfectly unimportant to the present 
argument which is assumed. The lan- 
guage spoken, however, by the mythology 
of nearly all religions seems to prove 
that at some distant period man forsook 
the path of nature, and sacrificed the 
purity and happiness of his being to un- 
natural appetites. The date of this event 
seems to have also been that of some 
great change in the climates of the earth, 
with which it has an obvious correspond- 
ence. The allegory of Adam and Eve 
eating of the tree of evil, and entailing 
upon their posterity the wrath of God and 
the loss of everlasting life, admits of no 
other explanation than the disease and 
crime that have flowed from unnatural 
diet. Milton was so well aware of this 
that he makes Raphael thus exhibit to 
Adam the consequence of his disobedi- 
ence: — 

Immediately a place 
Before his eyes appeared, sad, noisome, 

dark; 
A lazar-house it seemed ; wherein were laid 
Numbers of all diseased — all maladies 
Of ghastly spasm, or racking torture, 

qualms 
Of heart-sick agony, all feverous kinds, 
Convulsions, epilepsies, fierce catarrhs. 
Intestine stone and ulcer, colic pangs, 
Demoniac frenzy, moping melancholy. 
And moon-struck madness, pining atro- 

phy, 

Marasmus, and wide-wasting pestilence, 
Dropsies and asthmas, and joint-racking 
rheums. 

And how many thousands more might 
not be added to this frightful catalogue ! 



84 



NOTES TO QUEEN MAB. 



The story of Prometheus is one like- 
wise which, ahhough universally admitted 
to be allegorical, has never been satis- 
factorily explained. Prometheus stole 
fire from heaven, and was chained for 
this crime to Mount Caucasus, where a 
vulture continually devoured his liver, 
that grew to meet its hunger. Hesiod 
says that, before the time of Prometheus, 
mankind were exempt from suffering; 
that they enjoyed a vigorous youth, and 
that death, when at length it came, 
approached like sleep, and gently closed 
their eyes. Again, so general v/as this 
opinion that Horace, a poet of the Augus- 
tan age, writes — 

Audax omnia perpeti. 
Gens humana ruit per vetitum nefas; 

Audax lapeti genus 
Ignem fraude mala gentibus intulit : 

Post ignem aetheria domo 
Subductum, macies et nova febrium 

Terris incubuit cohors, 
Semotique prius tarda necessitas 

Lethi corripuit gradum. 

How plain a language is spoken by all 
this! Prometheus (who represents the 
human race) effected some great change 
in the condition of his nature, and applied 
fire to culinary purposes; thus inventing 
an expedient for screening from his dis- 
gust the horrors of the shambles. From 
this moment his vitals were devoured by 
the vulture of disease. It consumed his 
being in every shape of its loathsome 
and infinite variety, inducing the soul- 
quelling sinkings of premature and vio- 
lent death. All vice arose from the ruin 
of healthful innocence. Tyranny, super- 
stition, commerce, and inequality were 
then first known, when reason vainly 
attempted to guide the wanderings of 
exacerbated passion. I conclude this 
part of the subject with an extract from 
Mr. Newton's Defence of Vegetable Regi- 
men, from whom I have borrowed this 
interpretation of the fable of Prometheus. 
" Making allowance for such transposi- 
tion of the events of the allegory as time 
might produce after the important truths 
were forgotten, which this portion of the 



ancient mythology was intended to trans- 
mit, the drift of the fable seems to be this : 
— Man at his creation was endowed with 
the gift of perpetual youth; that is, he 
was not formed to be a sickly suffering 
creature as we now see him, but to enjoy 
health, and to sink by slow degrees into 
the bosom of his parent earth without 
disease or pain. Prometheus first taught 
the use of animal food (primus bovem 
occidit Prometheus 1) and of fire, with 
which to render it more digestible and 
pleasing to the taste. Jupiter, and the 
rest of the gods, foreseeing the conse- 
quences of these inventions, were amused 
or irritated at the short-sighted devices of 
the newly-formed creature, and left him 
to experience the sad effects of them. 
Thirst, the necessary concomitant of a 
flesh diet" (perhaps of all diet vitiated 
by culinary preparation), "ensued; water 
was resorted to, and man forfeited the 
inestimable gift of health which he had ' 
received from heaven : he became diseased, 
the partaker of a precarious existence, 
and no longer descended slowly to his 
grave." 2 

But just disease to luxury succeeds, 
And every death its own avenger breeds; 
The fury passions from that blood began. 
And turned on man a fiercer savage — man. 

Man, and the animals whom he has 
infected with his society, or depraved by 
his dominion, are alone diseased. The 
wild hog, the mouflon, the bison, and the 
wolf, are perfectly exempt from malady, 
and invariably die either from external 
violence or natural old age. But the 
domestic hog, the sheep, the cow, and the 
dog, are subject to an incredible variety 
of distempers; and, like the corrupters of 
their nature, have physicians who thrive 
upon their miseries. The supereminence 
of man is like Satan's, a supereminence 
of pain; and the majority of his species, 
doomed to penury, disease, and crime, 
have reason to curse the untoward event 
that, by enabling him to communicate 
his sensations, raised him above the level 

^ Plin. Nat. Hist. lib. vii. sect. 57. 
"^ Return to Mature. Cadell, 1811. 



NOTES TO QUEEN MAB. 



8S 



of his fellow animals. But the steps that 
have been taken are irrevocable. The 
whole of human science is comprised in 
one question : — How can the advantages 
of intellect and civilization be reconciled 
with the liberty and pure pleasures of 
natural life ? How can we take the bene- 
fits and reject the evils of the system, 
which is now interwoven with all the fibres 
of our being? — I believe that abstinence 
from animal food and spirituous liquors 
would in a great measure capacitate us for 
the solution of this important question. 

It is true that mental and bodily 
derangement is attributable in part to 
other deviations from rectitude and nature 
than those which concern diet. The 
mistakes cherished by society respecting 
the connection of the sexes, whence the 
misery and diseases of unsatisfied celibacy, 
unenjoying prostitution, and the prema- 
ture arrival of puberty, necessarily spring; 
the putrid atmosphere of crowded cities; 
the exhalations of chemical processes; the 
muffling of our bodies in superfluous 
apparel; the absurd treatment of infants: 
— all these and innumerable other causes 
contribute their mite to the mass of human 
evil. 

Comparative anatomy teaches us that 
man resembles frugivorous animals in 
everything, and carnivorous in nothing; 
he has neither claws wherewith to seize 
his prey, nor distinct and pointed teeth 
to tear the living fibre. A Mandarin of 
the first class, with nails two inches long, 
would probably find them alone inefficient 
to hold even a hare. After every suljter- 
fuge of gluttony, the bull must be degraded 
into the ox, and the ram into the wether, 
by an unnatural and inhuman operation, 
that the flaccid fibre may offer a fainter 
resistance to rebellious nature. It is only 
by softening and disguising dead flesh by 
culinary preparation that it is rendered 
susceptible of mastication or digestion; 
and that the sight of its bloody juices and 
raw horror does not excite intolerable 
loathing and disgust. Let the advocate 
of animal food force himself to a decisive 
experiment on its fitness, and, as Plutarch 
recommends, tear a living lamb with his 
teeth, and plunging his head into its vitals 



slake his thirst with the steaming blood; 
when fresh from the deed of horror, let 
him revert to the irresistible instincts of 
nature that wouM rise in judgment against 
it, and say, "Nature formed me for such 
work as this." Then, and then only, 
would he be consistent. 

Man resembles no carnivorous animal. 
There is no exception, unless man be one, 
to the rule of herbivorous animals having 
cellulated colons. 

The orang-outang perfectly resembles 
man both in the order and number of his 
teeth. The orang-outang is the most 
anthropomorphous of the ape tribe, all of 
which are strictly frugivorous. There is 
no other species of animals, which live 
on different food, in which this analogy 
exists. 1 In many frugivorous animals, 
the canine teeth are more pointed and 
distinct than those of man. The resem- 
blance also of the human stomach to that 
of the orang-outang is greater than to 
that of any other animal. 

The intestines are also identical with 
those of herbivorous animals, which pre- 
sent a larger surface for absorption and 
have ample and cellulated colons. The 
caecum also, though short, is larger than 
that of carnivorous animals; and even 
here the orang-outang retains its accus- 
tomed similarity. 

The structure of the human frame, then, 
is that of one fitted to a pure vegetable 
diet, in every essential particular. It is 
true that the reluctance to abstain from 
animal food, in those who have been long 
accustomed to its stimulus, is so great in 
some persons of weak minds as to be 
scarcely overcome; but this is far from 
bringing any argument in its favor. A 
lamb, which was fed for some time on 
flesh by a ship's crew, refused its natural 
diet at the end of the voyage. There are 
numerous instances of horses, sheep, 
oxen, and even wood-pigeons, having 
been taught to live upon flesh, until they 
have loathed their natural aliment. Young 
children evidently prefer pastry, oranges, 
apples, and other fruit, to the flesh of 

' Cuvier, LeQons (TAnat. Contp. torn. iii. pp. 
169, 373, 448, 465, 480. Rees's Cyclopcedia, art. 

Man. 



86 



NOTES TO QUEEN MAB. 



animals; until, by the gradual deprava- 
tion of the digestive organs, the free use 
of vegetables has for a time produced 
serious inconveniences; for a time, I 
say, since there never was an instance 
wherein a change from spirituous liquors 
and animal food to vegetables and pure 
water has failed ultimately to invigorate 
the body, by rendering its juices bland 
and consentaneous, and to restore to 
the mind that cheerfulness and elasticity 
which not one in fifty possesses on the 
present system. A love of strong liquors 
is also with difficulty taught to infants. 
Almost every one remembers the wry 
faces which the first glass of port pro- 
duced. Unsophisticated instinct is inva- 
riably unerring; but to decide on the 
fitnes^> of animal food from the perverted 
appetites which its constrained adoption 
produces, is to make the criminal a judge 
in his own cause : it is even worse, it is 
appealing to the infatuated drunkard in 
a question of the salubrity of brandy. 

What is the cause of morbid action in 
the animal system? Not the air we 
breathe, for our fellow denizens of nature 
breathe the same uninjured; not the water 
we drink (if remote from the pollutions 
of man and his inventions^), for the 
animals drink it too; not the earth we 
tread upon; not the unobscured sight of 
glorious nature, in the wood, the field, 
or the expanse of sky and ocean; nothing 
that we are or do in common with the un- 
diseased inhabitants of the forest. Some- 
thing, then, wherein we differ from them: 
our habit of altering our food by fire, so 
that our appetite is no longer a just cri- 
terion for the fitness of its gratification. 
Except in children, there remain no traces 
of that instinct which determines, in all 
other animals, what aliment is natural or 
otherwise; and so perfectly obliterated 
are they in the reasoning adults of our 
species, that it has become necessary to 
urge considerations drawn from compara- 

1 The necessity of resorting to some means of 
purifying water, and the disease which arises from 
its adulteration in civilized countries, is sufficiently 
apparent. See Dr. Lambe's Reports eti Cancer. 
I do not assert that the use of water is in itself 
unnatural, but that the unperverted palate would 
swallow no liquid capable of occasioning disease. 



tive anatomy to prove that we are natu- 
rally frugivorous. 

Crime is madness. Madness is disease. 
Whenever the cause of disease shall be 
discovered, the root, from which all vice 
and misery have so long overshadowed 
the globe, will lie bare to the axe. All 
the exertions of man, from that moment, 
may be considered as tending to the clear 
profit of his species. No sane mind in a 
sane body resolves upon a real crime. It 
is a man of violent passions, bloodshot 
eyes, and swollen veins, that alone can 
grasp the knife of murder. The system 
of a simple diet promises no Utopian 
advantages. It is no mere reform of 
legislation, whilst the furious passions and 
evil propensities of the hunian heart, in 
which it had its origin, are still unassuaged. 
It strikes at the root of all evil, and is an 
experiment which may be tried with suc- 
cess, not alone by nations, but by small 
societies, families, and even individuals. 
In no cases has a return to vegetable diet 
produced the slightest injury; in most it 
has been attended with changes undeni- 
ably beneficial. Should ever a physician 
be born with the genius of Locke, I am 
persuaded that he might trace all bodily 
and mental derangements to our un- 
natural habits, as clearly as that philoso- 
pher has traced all knowledge to sensation. 
What prolific sources of disease are not 
those mineral and vegetable poisons that 
have been introduced for its extirpation ! 
How many thousands have become mur- 
derers and robbers, bigots and domestic 
tyrants, dissolute and abandoned adven- 
turers, from the use of fermented liquors; 
who, had they slaked their thirst only 
with pure water, would have lived but to 
diffuse the happiness of their own unper- 
verted feelings ! How many groundless 
opinions and absurd institutions have not 
received a general sanction from the sot- 
tishness and intemperance of individuals ! 
Who will assert that, had the populace of 
Paris satisfied their hunger at the ever- 
furnished table of vegetable nature, they 
would have lent their brutal suffrage 
to the proscription-list of Robespierre? 
Could a set of men, whose passions were 
not perverted by unnatural stimuli, look 



NOTES TO QUEEN MAB. 



8? 



with coolness on an au^o da fe ? Is it to 
be believed that a being of gentle feelings, 
rising from his meal of roots, would take 
delight in sports of blood? Was Nero a 
man of temperate life? Could you read 
calm health in his cheek, flushed with 
ungovernable propensities of hatred for 
the human raee? Did Muley Ismail's 
pulse beat evenly, was his skin trans- 
parent, did his eyes beam with health- 
fulness, and its invariable concomitants, 
cheerfulness and benignity? Though 
history has decided none of these ques- 
tions, a child could not hesitate to answer 
in the negative. Surely the bile-suffused 
cheek of Buonaparte, his wrinkled brow, 
and yellow eye, the ceaceless inquietude 
of his nervous system, speak no less plainly 
the character of his unresting ambition 
than his murders and his victories. It is 
impossible, had Buonaparte descended 
from a race of vegetable feeders, that he 
could have had either the inclination or 
the power to ascend the throne of the 
Bourbons. The desire of tyranny could 
scarcely be excited in the individual, the 
power to tyrannize would certainly not 
be delegated by a society neither frenzied 
by inebriation nor rendered impotent and 
irrational by disease. Pregnant indeed 
with inexhaustible calamity is the renuncia- 
tion of instinct, as it concerns our physical 
nature; arithmetic cannot enumerate, nor 
reason perhaps suspect, the multitudinous 
sources of disease in civilized life. Even 
common water, that apparently innoxious 
pabulum, when corrupted by the filth of 
populous cities, is a deadly and insidious 
destroyer. 1 Who can wonder that all the 
inducements held out by God himself in 
the Bible to virtue should have been 
vainer than a nurse's tale; and that those 
dogmas, by which he has there excited 
and justified the most ferocious propensi- 
ties, should have alone been deemed essen- 
tial; whilst Christians are in the daily 
practice of all those habits which have 
infected with disease and crime, not only 
the reprobate sons, but these favored 
children of the common Father's love? 
Omnipotence itself could not save them 

* Lambe's Reports on Cancer. 



from the consequences of this original 
and universal sin. 

There is no disease, bodily or mental, 
which adoption of vegetable diet and 
pure water has not infallibly mitigated, 
wherever the experiment has been fairly 
tried. Debility is gradually converted 
into strength; disease into healthfulness: 
madness, in all its hideous variety, from 
the ravings of the fettered maniac to the 
unaccountable irrationalities of ill-tem 
per, that make a hell of domestic life, 
into a calm and considerate evenness of 
temper, that alone might offer a certain 
pledge of the future moral reformation 
of society. On a natural system of diet, 
old age would be our last and our only 
malady; the term of our existence would 
be protracted; we should enjoy life, and 
no longer preclude others from the enjoy- 
ment of it; all sensational delights would 
be infinitely more exquisite and perfect; 
the very sense of being would then be a 
continued pleasure, such as we now feel 
it in some few and favored moments of 
our youth. By all that is sacred in our 
hopes for the human race, I conjure those 
who love happiness and truth to give a 
fair trial to the vegetable system. Rea- 
soning is surely superfluous on a subject 
whose merits an experience of six months 
would set forever at rest. But it is 
only among the enlightened and benevo- 
lent that so great a sacrifice of appetite 
and prejudice can be expected, even 
though its ultimate excellence should not 
admit of dispute. It is found easier, by 
the short-sighted victims of disease, to 
palliate their torments by medicine than 
to prevent them by regimen. The vul- 
gar of all ranks are invariably sensual 
and indocile; yet I cannot but feel my- 
self persuaded that when the benefits of 
vegetable diet are mathematically proved, 
when it is as clear that those who live 
naturally are exempt from premature 
death as that nine is not one, the most 
sottish of mankind will feel a preference 
towards a long and tranquil, contrasted 
v/ith a short and painful, life. On the 
average, out of sixty persons four die in 
three years. Hopes are entertained that, 
in April, 1814, a statement will be given 



NOTES TO QUEEN MAB. 



that sixty persons, all having lived more 
than three years on vegetables and pure 
water, are then in perfect health. More 
than two years have now elapsed; Jiot 
one of them has died ; no such example 
will be found in any sixty persons taken 
at random. Seventeen persons of all 
ages (the families of Dr. Lambe and Mr. 
Newton) have lived for seven years on 
this diet without a death, and almost 
without the slightest illness. Surely, 
when we consider that some of these 
were infants, and one a martyr to asthma 
now nearly subdued, we may challenge 
any seventeen persons taken at random 
in this city to exhibit a parallel case. 
Those who may have been excited to 
question the rectitude of established 
habits of diet, by these loose remarks, 
should consult Mr. Newton's luminous 
and eloquent essay. i 

When these proofs come fairly before 
the world, and are clearly seen by all 
who understand arithmetic, it is scarcely 
possible that abstinence from aliments 
demonstrably pernicious should not be- 
come universal. In proportion to the 
number of proselytes, so will be the 
weight of evidence; and when a thou- 
sand persons can be produced, living on 
vegetables and distilled water, who have 
to dread no disease but old age, the 
world will be compelled to regard ani- 
mal flesh and fermented liquors as slow 
but certain poisons. The change which 
would be produced by simpler habits on 
political economy is sufficiently remark- 
able. The monopolizing eater of ani- 
mal flesh would no longer destroy his 
constitution by devouring an acre at a 
meal, and many loaves of bread would 
cease to contribute to gout, madness and 
apoplexy, in the shape of a pint of por- 
ter, or a dram of gin, when appeasing 
the long-protracted famine of the hard- 
working peasant's hungry babes. The 
quantity of nutritious vegetable matter, 
consumed in fattening the carcass of an 
ox, would afford ten times the suste- 
nance, undepraving indeed, and incapa- 
ble of generating disease, if gathered 

^ Return to Nature, or Defence of Vegetable 
Regimen. Cadell, 1811. 



immediately from the bosom of the earth. 
The most fertile districts of the habitable 
globe are now actually cultivated by men 
for animals, at a delay and waste of ali- 
ment absolutely incapable of calculation. 
It is only the wealthy that can, to any 
great degree, even now, indulge the un- 
natural craving for dead flesh, and they 
pay for the greater license of the privi- 
lege by subjection to supernumerary dis- 
eases. Again, the spirit of the nation 
that should take the lead in this great 
reform would insensibly become agricul- 
tural; commerce, with all its vice, self- 
ishness, and corruption, would gradually 
decline; more natural habits would pro- 
duce gentler manners, and the excessive 
complication af political relations would 
be so far simplified that ev-ry individual 
might feel and understand why he loved 
his country, and took a personal interest 
in its welfare. How would England, 
for example, depend on the caprices of 
foreign rulers if she contained within 
herself all the necessaries, and despised 
whatever they possessed of the luxuries, 
of life? How could they starve her into 
compliance with their views? Of what 
consequence would it be that they refused 
to take her woollen manufactures, when 
large and fertile tracts of the island 
ceased to be allotted to the waste of pas- 
turage? On a natural system of diet we 
should require no spices from India; no 
wines from Portugal, Spain, France, or 
Madeira; none of those multitudinous 
articles of luxury, for which every cor- 
ner of the globe is rifled, and which are 
the causes of so much individual rival- 
ship, such calamitous and sanguinary 
national disputes. In the history of 
modern times, the avarice of commercial 
monopoly, no less than the ambition of 
weak and wicked chiefs, seems to have 
fomented the universal discord, to have 
added stubbornness to the mistakes of 
cabinets, and indocility to the infatua- 
tion of the people. Let it ever be re- 
membered that it is the direct influence of 
commerce to make the interval between 
the richest and the poorest man wider 
and more unconquerable. Let it be 
remembered that it is a foe to everything 



NOTES TO QUEEN MAB. 



89 



of real worth and excellence in the 
human character. The odious and dis- 
gusting aristocracy of wealth is built 
upon the ruins of all that is good in 
chivalry or republicanism; and luxury is 
the forerunner of a barbarism scarce ca- 
pable of cure. Is it impo.ssible to realize 
a state of society, where all the energies 
of man shall be directed to the produc- 
tion of his solid happiness? Certainly, 
if this advantage (the object of all polit- 
ical speculation) be in any degree attain- 
able, it is attainable only by a community 
which holds out no factitious incentives 
to the avarice and ambition of the few, 
and which is internally organized for 
the liberty, security, and comfort of the 
many. None must be intrusted with 
power (and money is the completest 
species of power) who do not stand 
pledged to use it exclusively for the gen- 
eral benefit. But the use of animal flesh 
and fermented liquors directly militates 
with this equality of the rights of man. 
The peasant cannot gratify these fashion- 
able cravings without leaving his family 
to starve. Without disease and war, 
those sweeping curtailers of population, 
pasturage would include a waste too great 
to be afforded. The labor requisite to 
support a family is far lighter 1 than is 
usually supposed. The peasantry work, 
not only for themselves, but for the aris- 
tocracy, the army, and the manufac- 
turers. 

The advantage of a reform in diet is 
obviously greater than that of any other. 
It strikes at i,he root of the evil. To 
remedy the abuses of legislation, before 
we annihilate the propensities by which 
they are produced, is to suppose that by 
taking away the effect the cause will 
cease to operate. But the efficacy of 
this system depends entirely on the pros- 

^ It has come under the author's experience 
that some of the workmen on an embankment in 
North Wales, who, in consequence of the inabil- 
ity of the proprietor to pay them, seldom received 
their wages, have supported large families by cul- 
tivating small spots of sterile ground by moon- 
light. In the notes to Pratt's Poem, " Bread, or 
the Poor," is an account of an industrious laborer 
who, by working in a small garden, before and 
after his day's task, attained to an enviable state 
of independence. 



elytism of individuals, and grounds its 
merits, as a benefit to the community, 
upon the total change of the dietetic 
habits in its members. It proceeds se- 
curely from a number of particular cases 
to one that is universal, and has this ad- 
vantage over the contrary mode, that 
one error does not invalidate all that has 
gone before. 

Let not too much, however, be ex- 
pected from this system. The healthiest 
among us is not exempt from hereditary 
disease. The most symmetrical, athletic, 
and long-lived is a being inexpressibly 
inferior to what he would have been, had 
not the unnatural habits of his ancestors 
accumulated for him a certain portion of 
malady and deformity. In the most per- 
fect specimen of civilized man; something 
is still found wanting by the physiologi- 
cal critic. Can a return to nature, then, 
instantaneously eradicate predispositions 
that have been slowly taking root in the 
silence of innumerable ages? — Indubi- 
tably not. All that I conteni for is, that 
from the moment of the relinquishing all 
unnatural habits no new disease is gen- 
erated; and that the predisposition to 
hereditary maladies gradually.perishes, for 
want of its accustomed supply. In cases 
of consumption, cancer, gout, asthma, 
and scrofula, such is the invariable ten- 
dency of a diet of vegetables and pure 
water. 

Those who may be induced by these 
rem.arks to give the vegetable system a 
fair trial, should, in the first place, date 
the commencement of their practice from 
the moment of their conviction. All de- 
pends upon breaking through a perni- 
cious habit resolutely and at once. Dr. 
Trotter ^ asserts that no drunkard was 
ever reformed by gradually relinquishing 
his dram. Animal flesh, in its effects on 
the human stomach, is analogous to a 
dram. It is similar in the kind, though 
differing in the degree, of its operation. 
The proselyte to a pure diet must be 
warned to expect a temporary diminution 
of muscular strength. The subtraction 
of a powerful stimulus will suffice to 
account for this event. But it is only 
^ See Trotter on the Nervous Temperament. 



90 



NOTES TO QUEEN MAB. 



temporary, and is succeeded by an equable 
capability for exertion, far surpassing his 
former various and fluctuating strength. 
Above all, he will acquire an easiness of 
breathing, by which such exertion is per- 
formed, with a remarkable exemption 
from that painful and difficult panting 
now felt by almost every one after hastily 
climbing an ordinary mountain. He 
will be equally capable of bodily exer- 
tion, or mental ■ application, after as 
before his simple meal. He will feel 
none of the narcotic effects of ordinary 
diet. Irritability, the direct consequence 
of exhausting stimuli, would yield to the 
power of natural and tranquil impulses. 
He will no longer pine under the lethargy 
of ennui, that unconquerable weariness 
of life, more to be dreaded than death 
itself. He will escape the epidemic 
madness, which broods over its own in- 
jurious notions of the Deity, and "real- 
izes the hell that priests and beldams 
feign." Every man forms, as it were, 
his god from his own character; to the 
divinity of one of simple habits no offer- 
ing would be more acceptable than the 
happiness of his creatures. He would 
be incapable of hating or persecuting 
others for the love of God. He will find, 
moreover, a system of simple diet to be 
a system of perfect epicurism. He will 
no longer be incessantly occupied in 
blunting and destroying those organs 
from which he expects his gratification. 
The pleasures of taste to be derived from 
a dinner of potatoes, beans, peas, tur- 
nips, lettuces, with a dessert of apples, 
gooseberries, strawberries, currants, rasp- 
berries, and in winter, oranges, apples 
and pears, is far greater than is supposed. 
Those who wait until they can eat this 
plain fare with the sauce of appetite will 
scarcely join with the hypocritical sen- 
sualist at a lord-mayor's feast, who de- 
claims against the pleasures of the table. 
Solomon kept a thousand concubines, 
and owned in despair that all was vanity. 
The man whose happiness is constituted 
by the society of one amiable woman 
would find some difficulty in sympathiz- 
ing with the disappointment of this ven- 
erable debauchee. 



I address myself not only to the young 
enthusiast, the ardent devotee of truth 
and virtue, the pure and passionate mor- 
alist, yet unvitiated by the contagion of 
the world. He will embrace a pure sys- 
tem, from its abstract truth, its beauty, 
its simplicity, and its promise of wide- 
extended benefit; unless custom has 
turned poison into food, he will hate the 
brutal pleasures of the chase by instinct; 
it will be a contemplation full of horror, 
and disappointment to his mind, that 
beings capable of the gentlest and most 
admirable sympathies should take delight 
in the death-pangs and last convulsions 
of dying animals. The elderly man, 
whose youth has been poisoned by in- 
temperance, or who has lived with appar- 
ent moderation, and is afflicted with a 
variety of painful maladies, would find 
his account in a beneficial change pro- 
duced without the risk of poisonous 
medicines. The mother, to whom the 
perpetual restlessness of disease and 
unaccountable deaths incident to her 
children are the causes of incurable un- 
happiness, would on this diet experience 
the satisfaction of beholding their per- 
petual healths and natural playfulness. ^ 
The most valuable lives are daily de- 
stroyed by diseases that it is dangerous 
to palliate and impossible to cure by 
medicine. How much longer will man 
continue to pimp for the gluttony of 
Death, his most insidious, implacable, 
and eternal foe? 



1 See Mr. Newton's book. His children are 
the most beautiful and healthy creatures it is 
possible to conceive ; the girls are perfect models 
for a sculptor ; their dispositions are also the 
most gentle and conciliating ; the judicious treat- 
ment, which they experience in other points, 
may be a correlative cause of this. In the first 
five years of their life, of iS,ooo children that are 
born, 7,500 die of various diseases; and how 
many more of those that survive are not rendered 
miserable by maladies not immediately mortal? 
The quality and quantity of a woman's milk are 
materially injured by the use of dead flesh. In 
an island near Iceland, where no vegetables are 
to be got, tlie children invariably die of tetanus 
before they are three weeks old, and the popula- 
tion is supplied from the mainland. — Sir G. 
Mackenzie's Hist, of Iceland. See also Emile, 
chap, i. pp. 53, 54, 56- 



NOTES TO QUEEN MAS. 



91 



^A-XXii ^pOKOvras aypiovi KaXdre, Kai napSd- 
kftf, Kai kioi'TOi, avTol 6( fiiai(poi'(ire ii^ ui/jioTiiTa, 
tcara^nrnvTii tKtivo>i oiiSev ' iKcivoti fjiv yap b 
(povos rpo(pfi, fjn'iv 6^ Oil^ov iariv. . , . "On yap 
OVK £<JTiv dvdp'jj'^tj) Kara (pvciv to (japKOipuytif^ 
npCiTov /liv uTTo Twv au)j/aTO)v drjXoiJrat rrjs 
KUTauKivfii. OiiStvi yap eoiKf to dvOpdnov 
aioiia Twv im aapKotpayia yiyov6T(nv, 011 ypvTrdTtj; 
■ydXuvs, OVK o^vrtji ovvyos, gv Tpayiirrn d^ovTOiv 
Ttpdcriariv, ov Kotkiag ivTovia Kai TrvivfxaTOi 
dfpfjLOTrjs, Tpiipat Ktti KaTepyaauadai dvpurfi 
TO iiaph Kai KpfdSii' dkX' avTodiv fj ipvcn^ Tjj" 
XiioTTjTi tCov dhdvTiav, Kai Tig a^iiKpoTrjri Toh 
OTOfjiiiTUi, Kai Tii) /xuXaKOrrjTt Trjg ykioaaJji, kuI rp 
irpoj TTEipiv ajx^XvTrjTL to'v TTVibnaroi, i^dfuvVTai 
TTiv aapKO(payiav. Ki 61 Xiyeig iTKpvKti'ai 

atavTOv ini ToiavTrjv i<5w6>jv, jSoiiXei ipayelv, 
npCJTov avTOi d-KOKveivov ' dXX' aiiroj 6id ataurov, 
firi ^ptjadfiivoi KOTtiSt, fxr]6{ Tvaavi(^ Tivl, fitj^c 
iriXcKii ■ aJLKd, wj /.(jkoi Kai dpKToi Kai AiovTCg avroi 
"aa iadiovai ipovevovcriv, aveXf dr'iyixuTi j3ovp, rj 
ardfiaTi avv, rj dpva fj Xnyioov 6iQfipr]^ov, Kai 
ipaye npoantautv eti C^^ovtos w> iKUva. , . . 
'HfiUi 6i ovTUs (V TU) jxiaupdvio Tpv(pwiiiv, wcrr' 
itt^'ov TO Kpiag npoaayoptiiofjiiv, f(r' ^'ipwi^ Trpoj 
avTo TO Kpiai ^eoiiiOa, dvafiiyvvvTei eXaiov, 
tiivov, ixfXi, ydpov, o^og, riftbcfxaai Y-vpiaKolg, 
'^ppa^tKoig, SiCriTip oVrwj vfKpov ivTatpiQ^ovTeg. 
Kai yap ovTiog avriov SiaXvOivrujv Kni /iaXa^Biv- 
Twv Kai TpoTTov Tivd KpeoaairivTUiv epyov tOTi Trjv 
7r^v|/tv KpaTrjaai, Kai iiaKOaTijOeiffrjg ii iiivag 
Pnpi'TTjTag ifiiroifl Kai voawSfig dirfx^iag. . . . 
OvTU) TO ■Kp(j)Tov ayptov ti ^coov ippiodr} koI 
KnKOvpyov f7r' opvtg Ttg fj 'Y^i'S I'iXKVffTO' Kai 
yfiidfjifvov, OVTU) Kui -KpoffieX Ttjaav iv iKfivoig Td 
poviKov iirl (3ovv ipy&Ttjv t/Xdf, Kai Td Kdofxotv 
TTpoflarov, Kai tov uiKOVpov dXiKTpova ' Kai 
Kara fitKobv o2tw tt^v dirXriGTiav TovuiaavTfg, ini 
Cipayiig dvdooiniov, Kai ipdvovg, Kai iroXeixovg 
nporjXdov. — JlXohT. Tzepl Trjg 'ZapKOipayiag. 



NOTE ON QUEEN MAB, BY MRS. 
I SHELLEY. 

Shelley was eighteen when he wrote 
I "Queen Mab;" he never published it. 
■' When it was written, he had come to the 
! decision that he was too young to be a 
; "judge of controversies;" and he was 
» desirous of acquiring " that sobriety of 
spirit which is the characteristic of true 



heroism." But he never doubted the 
truth or utility of his opinions; and, in 
printing and privately distributing ' 'Queen 
Mab," he believed that he should further 
their dissemination, without occasioning 
the mischief either to others or himself 
that might arise from publication. It is 
doubtful whether he would himself have 
admitted it into a collection of his works. 
His severe classical taste, refined by the 
constant study of the Greek poets, might 
have discovered defects that escape the 
ordinary reader; and the change his 
opinions underwent in many points would 
have prevented him from putting forth 
the speculations of his boyish days. But 
the poem is too beautiful in itself, and 
far too remarkable as the production of 
a boy of eighteen, to allow of its being 
passed over: besides that, having been 
frequently reprinted, the omission would 
be vain. In the former edition certain 
portions were left out, as shocking the 
general reader from the violence of their 
attack on religion. I myself had a pain- 
ful feeling that such erasures might be 
looked upon as a mark of disrespect 
towards the author, and am glad to have 
the opportunity of restoring them. The 
notes also are reprinted entire — not be- 
cause they are models of reasoning or 
lessons of truth, but because Shelley 
wrote them, and that all that a man at 
once so distinguished and so excellent 
ever did deserves to be preserved. The 
alterations his opinions underwent ought 
to be recorded, for they form his history. 
A series of articles was published in 
the A'e'io Ahmihly JSTagazine during the 
autumn of the year 1832, written by a 
man of great talent, a fellow-collegian 
and warm friend of Shelley : they describe 
admirably the state of his mind during 
his collegiate life. Inspired with ardor 
for the acquisition of knowledge, en- 
dowed v/ith the keenest sensibility and 
with the fortitude of a martyr, Shelley 
came among his fellow-creatures, con- 
gregated for the purposes of education, 
like a spirit from another sphere; too 
delicately organized for the rough treat- 
ment man uses towards man, especially 
in the season of youth, and too resolute 



92 



NOTES TO QUEEN MAB. 



in carrying out his own sense of good and 
justice, not to become a victim. To a 
devoted attachment to those he loved he 
added a determined resistance to oppres- 
sion. Refusing to fag at Eton, he was 
treated with revolting cruelty by masters 
and boys : this roused instead of taming 
his spirit, and he rejected the duty of obe- 
dience when it was enforced by menaces 
and punishment. To aversion to the 
society of his fellow-creatures, such as 
he found them when collected together 
in societies, where one egged-on the other 
to acts of tyranny, was joined the deepest 
sympathy and compassion; while the at- 
tachment he felt for individuals, and the 
admiration with which he regarded their 
powers and their virtues, led him to en- 
tertain a high opinion of the perfectibil- 
ity of human nature; and he believed 
that all could reach the highest grade of 
moral improvement, did not the customs 
and prejudices of society foster evil pas- 
sions and excuse evil actions. 

The oppression which, trembling at 
every nerve yet resolute to heroism, it 
was his ill-fortune to encounter at school 
and at college, led him to dissent in all 
things from those whose arguments were 
blows, whose faith appeared to engender 
blame and hatred. "During my exist- 
ence," he wrote to a friend in 1812, "I 
have incessantly speculated, thought, and 
read." His readings were not always 
well chosen; among them were the works 
of the French philosophers: as far as 
metaphysical argument went, he tempo- 
rarily became a convert. At the same 
time, it was the cardinal article of his 
faith that, if men were but taught and 
induced to treat their fellows with love, 
charity, and equal rights, this earth would 
realize paradise. He looked upon reli- 
gion, as it is professed, and above all 
practised, as hostile instead of friendly 
to the cultivation of those virtues which 
would make men brothers. 

Can this be wondered at? At the age 
of seventeen, fragile in health and frame, 
of the purest habits in morals, full of de- 
voted generosity and universal kindness, 
glowing with ardor to attain wisdom, re- 
solved at every personal sacrifice to do 



right, burning with a desire for affection 
and sympathy, — he was treated as a 
reprobate, cast forth as a criminal. 

The cause was that he was sincere; 
that he believed the opinions which he 
entertained to be true. And he loved 
truth with a martyr's love; he was ready 
to sacrifice station and fortune, and his 
dearest affections, at its shrine. The 
sacrifice was demanded from, and made 
by, a youth of seventeen. It is a singu- 
lar fact in the history of society in the 
civilized nations of modern times that no 
false step is so irretrievable as one made 
in early youth. Older men, it is true, 
when they oppose their fellows and trans- 
gress ordinary rules, carry a certain pru- 
dence or hypocrisy as a shield along with 
them. But youth is rash; nor can it im- 
agine, while asserting what it believes to 
be true, and doing what it believes to be 
right, that it should be denounced as 
vicious, and pursued as a criminal. 

Shelley possessed a quality of mind 
which experience has shown me to be of 
the rarest occurrence among human be- 
ings: this was his anworldliness. The 
usual motives that rule men, prospects of ( 
present or future advantage, the rank and 
fortune of those around, the taunts and 
censures, or the praise, of those who 
were hostile to him, had no influence 
whatever over his actions, and appar- 
ently none over his thoughts. It is diffi- 
cult even to express the simplicity and 
directness of purpose that adorned him. 
Some few might be found in the history 
of mankind, and some one at least 
among his own friends, equally disinter- 
ested and scornful, even to severe per- 
sonal sacrifices, of every baser motive. 
But no one, I believe, ever joined this 
noble but passive virtue to equal active 
endeavors for the benefit of his friends 
and mankind in general, and to equal 
power to produce the advantages he de- 
sired. The world's brightest gauds and 
its most solid advantages were of no worth 
in his eyes, when compared to the cause 
of what he considered truth, and the good 
of his fellow-creatures. Born in a posi- 
tion which, to his inexperienced mind, 
afforded the greatest facilities to practise 



NOTES TO QUEEN MAB. 



93 



the tenets he espoused, he boldly declared 
the use he would make of fortune and 
station, and enjoyed the belief that he 
should materially benefit his fellow crea- 
tures by his actions; while, conscious of 
surpassing powers of reason and imagi- 
nation, it is not strange that he should, 
even while so young, have believed that 
his written thoughts would tend to dis- 
seminate opinions which he believed 
conducive to the happiness of the human 
race. 

If man were a creature devoid of 
passion, he might have said and done 
all this with quietness. But he was too 
enthusiastic, and too full of hatred of all 
the ills he witnessed, not to scorn dan- 
ger. Various disappointments tortured, 
but could not tame, his soul. The more 
enmity he met, the more earnestly he 
became attached to his peculiar views, 
and hostile to those of the men who 
persecuted him. 

He was animated to greater zeal by 
compassion for his fellow-creatures. His 
sympathy was excited by the misery with 
which the world is burning. He wit- 
nessed the sufferings of the poor, and 
was aware of the evils of ignorance. 
He desired to induce every rich man 
to despoil himself of superfluity, and to 
create a brotherhood of property and 
service, and was ready to be the first to 
lay down the advantages of his birth. 
He was of too uncompromising a dispo- 
sition to join any party. He did not in 
his youth look forward to gradual im- 
provement: nay, in those days of intoler- 
ance, now almost forgotten, it seemed 
as easy to look forward to the sort of 
millennium of freedom and brotherhood 
which he thought the proper state of 
mankind as to the present reign of 
moderation and improvement. Ill-health 
made him believe that his race would 
soon be run ; that a year or two was all 
he had of life. He desired that these 
years should be useful and illustrious. 
He saw, in a fervent call on his fellow- 
creatures to share alike the blessings of 
the creation, to love and serve each 
other, the noblest work that life and 



time permitted him. In this spirit he 
composed "Queen Mab." 

He was a lover of the wonderful and 
wild in literature, but had not fostered 
these tastes at their genuine sources — 
the romances and chivalry of the middle 
ages — but in the perusal of such Ger- 
man works as were current in those 
days. Under the influence of these he, 
at the age of fifteen, wrote two short 
prose romances of slender merit. The 
sentiments and language were exagger- 
ated, the composition imitative and poor. 
He also wrote a poerti on the subject of 
Ahasuerus — being led to it by a German 
fragment he picked up, dirty and torn, 
in Lincoln's Inn Fields. This fell after- 
wards into other hands, and was con- 
siderably altered before it was printed. 
Our earlier English poetry was almost 
unknown to him. The love and knowl- 
edge of Nature developed by Words- 
worth — the lofty melody and mysterious 
beauty of Coleridge's poetry — and the 
wild fantastic machinery and gorgeous 
scenery adopted by Southey — composed 
his favorite reading ; the rhythm of 
"Queen Mab" was founded on that of 
" Thalaba " and the first few lines bear a 
striking resemblance in spirit, though not 
in idea, to the opening of that poem. His 
fertile imagination, and ear tuned to the 
finest sense of harmony, preserved him 
from imitation. Another of his favorite 
books was the poem of " Gebir " by Wal- 
ter Savage Landor. From his boyhood he 
had a wonderful facility of versification, 
which he carried into another language; 
and his Latin school-verses were com- 
posed with an ease and correctness that 
procured for him prizes, and caused him 
to be resorted to by all his friends for 
help. He was, at the period of writing 
"Queen Mab," a great traveller within 
the limits of England, Scotland, and 
Ireland. His time was spent among the 
loveliest scenes of these countries. Moun- 
tain and lake and forest were his home; 
the phenomena of Nature were his favor- 
ite study. He loved to inquire into their 
causes, and was addicted to pursuits of 
natural philosophy and chemistry, as far 



94 



NOTES TO QUEEN MAB. 



as they could be carried on as an amuse- 
ment. These tastes gave truth and vi- 
vacity to his descriptions, and warmed his 
soul with that deep admiration for the 
wonders of Nature which constant asso- 
ciation with her inspired. 

He never intended to publish " Queen 
Mab " as it stands ; but a few years after, 
when printing "Alastor," he extracted a 
small portion which he entitled "The 
Dcsmon of the World." In this he 
changed somewhat the versification, and 
made other alterations scarcely to be 
called improvements. 

Some years after, when in Italy, a 
bookseller published an edition of ' ' Queen 
Mab" as it originally stood. Shelley 
was hastily written to by his friends, under 
the idea that, deeply injurious as the 
mere distribution of the poem had proved, 
the publication might awaken fresh per- 
secutions. At the suggestion of these 
friends he wrote a letter on the subject, 
printed in the Eocainiiicr newspaper — 
with which I close this history of his 
earliest work. 



To THE EdITIdR of THE " EXAMINER." 

Sir, 

Having heard that a poem entitled 
" Queen Mab " has been surreptitiously 
published in London, and that legal pro- 
ceedings have been instituted against the 
publisher, I request the favor of your 
insertion of the following explanation of 
the affair, as it relates to me. 

A poem entitled "Queen Mab" was 
written by me at the age of eighteen, I 
dare say in a sufficiently intemperate spirit 
— but even then was not intended for 
publication, and a few copies only were 
struck off, to be distributed among my 
personal friends. I have not seen this 
production for several years. I doubt 
not but that it is perfectly worthless in 
point of literary composition ; and that, 
in all that concerns moral and political 
speculation, as well as in the subtler dis- 
criminations of metaphysical and religious 
doctrine, it is still more crude and imma- 
ture. I am a devoted enemy to religious. 



political and domestic oppression ; and 
I regret this publication, not so much 
from literary vanity, as because I fear it 
is better fitted to injure than to serve 
the sacred cause of freedom. I have di- 
rected my solicitor to apply to Chancery 
for an injunction to restrain the sale; but, 
after the precedent of Mr. Southey's 
" Wat Tyler " (a poem written, I believe, 
at the same age, and with the same un- 
reflecting enthusiasm), with little hope 
of success. 

Whilst I exonerate myself from all 
share in having divulged opinions hostile 
to existing sanctions, under the form, 
whatever it may be, which they assume in 
this poem, it is scarcely necessary for me 
to protest against the system of inculcat- 
ing the truth of Christianity or the excel- 
lence of Monarchy, however true or how- 
ever excellent they may be, by such 
equivocal arguments as confiscation and 
imprisonment, and invective and slander, 
and the insolent violation of the most 
sacred ties of Nature and society. 

Sir, 
I am your obliged and obedient servant, 

Percy B. Shelley. 

Pisa, June 22, 182 1. 



THE D.EMON OF THE WORLD. 

A FRAGMENT.l 

Part I. 

Nee tantum prodere vati, 
Quantum scire licet. Venit aetas omnis in unam 
Congeriem, miserumque premunt tot ssecula 
pectus. 

LucAN, Phars. L. v. 1. 176-178. 

How wonderful is Death, ; : 
Death and his brother Sle$p ! 

One pale as yonder wan arid horned 
moon, 
With lips of lurid blue. 

The other glowing like the vital morn 
When throned on ocean's wave 
It breathes over the world; 

I A fragment of Queen Mab revised. — Ed. 



THE D^MON OF THE WORLD. 



95 



Yet both so passing strange and wonder- 
ful ! 

Hath then the iron-sceptred Skeleton, 
Whose reign is in the tainted sepulchres, 
To the hell dogs that couch beneath his 

throne 
Cast that fair prey? Must that divinest 

form. 
Which love and admiration cannot view 
Without a beating heart, whose azure 

veins 
Steal like dark streams along a field of 

snow, 
Whose outline is as fair as marble clothed 
In light of some sublimest mind, decay? 

Nor putrefaction's breath 
Leave aught of this pure spectacle 
But loathsomeness and ruin? — 
Spare aught but a dark theme, 
On which the lightest heart might 

moralize? 
Or is it but that downy-winged slumbers 
Have charmed their nurse coy Silence, 
near her lids 
To watch their own repose? 
Will they, when morning's beam 
Flows through those wells of light. 
Seek far from noise and day some west- 
ern cave. 
Where woods and streams with soft and 
pausing winds 
A lulling murmur weave? — 

lanthe doth not sleep 
The dreamless sleep of death : 
Nor in her moonlight chamber silently 
Doth Henry hear her regular pulses 
throb. 
Or mark her delicate cheek 
With interchange of hues mock the broad 
moon, 
Outwatching weary night, 
Without assured reward. 
Her dewy eyes are closed; 
On their translucent lids, whose texture 

fine 
Scarce hides the dark blue orbs that burn 
below 
With unapparent fire, 
The baby Sleep is pillowed : 
Her golden tresses shade 
The bosom's stainless pride, 



Twining like tendrils of the parasite 
Around a marble column. 



Hark! whence that rushing sound? 
'T is like a wondrous strain that 

sweeps 
Around a lonely ruin 
When west winds sigh and evening waves 
respond 
In whispers from the shore : 
'T is wilder than the unmeasured notes 
Which from the unseen lyres of dells and 
groves 
The genii of the breezes sweep. 
Floating on waves of music and of light 
The chariot of the Daemon of the World 

Descends in silent power: 
Its shape reposed within : slight as some 

cloud 
That catches but the palest tinge of day 

When evening yields to night; 
Bright as that fibrous woof when stars 
endue 
Its transitory robe. 
Four shapeless shadows bright and beau- 
tiful 
Draw that strange car of glory, reins of 

light ^ 

Check their unearthly speed; they stop 
and fold 
Their wings of braided air : 
The Daemon leaning from the ethereal car 

Gazed on the slumbering maid. 
Human eye hath ne'er beheld 
A shape so wild, so bright, so beautiful, 
As that which o'er the maiden's charmed 
sleep 
Waving a starry wand. 
Hung like a mist of light. 
Such sounds as breathed around like 
odorous winds 
Of wakening spring arose. 
Filling the chamber and the moonlight 
sky. 

" Maiden, the world's supremest spirit 
Beneath the shadow of her wings 
Folds all thy memory doth inherit 
From ruin of divinest things, 
Feelings that lure thee to betray, 
And light of thoughts that pass 
away. 



96 



THE DAEMON OF THE WORLD. 



" For thou hast earned a mighty boon, 
The truths which wisest poets see 
Dimly, thy mind may make its own. 
Rewarding its own majesty. 

Entranced in some diviner mood 
Of self-obUvious solitude. 

** Custom, and Faith, and Power thou 
spurnest; 
From hate and awe thy heart is free; 
Ardent and pure as day thou burnest. 
For dark and cold mortality 
A living light, to cheer it long, 
The watch-fires of the world 
among. 

"Therefore from nature's inner shrine, 
Where gods and fiends in worship 
bend, 
Majestic spirit, be it thine 

The flame to seize, the veil to rend. 
Where the vast snake Eternity 
In charmed sleep doth ever lie. 

" All that inspires thy voice of love, 
Or speaks in thy unclosing eyes. 
Or through thy frame doth burn or move. 
Or think or feel, awake, arise ! 
Spirit, leave for mine and me 
Earth's unsubstantial mimicry! " 

It ceased, and from the mute and move- 
less frame 
A radiant spirit arose, 
All Beautiful in naked purity. 
Robed in its human hues it did ascend, 
Disparting as it went the silver clouds 
It moved towards the car, and took its 
seat 
Beside the Daemon shape. 

Obedient to the sweep of aery song. 

The mighty ministers 
Unfurled their prismy wings. 

The magic car moved on; 
The night was fair, innumerable stars 

Studded heaven's dark blue vault; 

The eastern wave grew pale 

With the first smile of morn. 

The magic car moved on, 
From the swift sweep of wings 
The atmosphere in flaming sparkles flew; 



And where the burning wheels 
Eddied above the mountain's loftiest 
peak 

Was traced a line of lightning. 
Now far above a rock the utmost verge 

Of the wide earth it flew. 
The rival of the Andes, whose dark brow 

Frowned o'er the silver sea. 

Far, far below the chariot's stormy path, 
Calm as a slumbering babe, 
Tremendous ocean lay. 

Its broad and silent mirror gave to view 
The pale and waning stars, 
The chariot's fiery track. 
And the gray light of morn 
Tingeing those fleecy clouds 

That cradled in their folds the infant 
dawn. 
The chariot seemed to fly 

Through the abyss of an immense con- 
cave, 

Radiant with million constellations, 
tinged 
With shades of infinite color, 
And semicircled with a belt 
Flashing incessant meteors. 

As they approached their goal 
The winged shadows seemed to gather 

speed. 
The sea no longer was distinguished; 

earth 
Appeared a vast and shadowy sphere, 
suspended 
In the black concave of heaven 
With the sun's cloudless orb, 
Whose rays of rapid light 
Parted around the chariot's swifter course, 
And fell like ocean's feathery spray 
Dashed from the boiling surge 
Before a vessel's prow. 

The magic car moved on. 
Earth's distant orb appeared 
The smallest light that twinkles in the 
heavens. 
Whilst round the chariot's way 
Innumerable systems widely rolled, 
And countless spheres diffused, 
An ever varying glory. 
It was a sight of wonder ! Some were 
horned, 



THE DMMON OF THE WORLD. 



97 



And, like the moon's argentine crescent 

hung 
In the dark dome of heaven; some did 

shed 
A clear mild beam like Hesperus, while 

the sea 
Yet glows with fading sunlight; others 

dashed 
Athwart the night with trains of bicker- 
ing fire, 
Like sphered worlds to death and ruin 

driven; 
Some shone like stars, and as the chariot 

passed 
Bedimmed all other light. 

Spirit of Nature ! here 
In this interminable wilderness 
Of worlds, at whose involved immensity 

Even soaring fancy staggers, 

Here is thy fitting temple. 

Yet not the lightest leaf 
That quivers to the passing breeze 

Is less instinct with thee, — 

Yet not the meanest worm. 
That lurks in graves and fattens on the 
dead 

Less shares thy eternal breath. 

Spirit of Nature ! thou 
Imperishable as this glorious scene, 

Here is thy fitting temple. 

If solitude hath ever led thy steps 
To the shore of the immeasurable sea, 
And thou hast lingered there 
Until the sun's broad orb 
Seemed resting on the fiery line of 

ocean 
Thou must have marked the braided 
webs of gold 
That without motion hang 
Over the sinking sphere : 
Thou must have marked the billowy 

mountain clouds. 
Edged with intolerable radiancy. 
Towering like rocks of jet 
Above the burning deep : 
And yet there is a moment 
When the sun's highest point 
Peers like a star o'er ocean's western 

edge. 
When those far clouds of feathery purple 
gleam 



Like fairy lands girt by some heavenly 

sea: 
Then has thy rapt imagination soared 
Where in the midst of all existing things 
The temple of the mightiest Daemon 

stands. 

Yet not the golden islands 
That gleam amid yon flood of purple 
^ light. 

Nor the feathery curtains 
That canopy the sun's resplendent couch, 

Nor the burnished ocean waves 

Paving that gorgeous dome. 

So fair, so wonderful a sight 
As the eternal temple could afford. 
The elements of all that human thought 
Can frame of lovely or sublime, did join 
To rear the fabric of the fane, nor aught 
Of earth may image forth its majesty. 
Yet likest evening's vault that faery hall, 
As heaven low resting on the wave it 
spread 

Its floors of flashing light. 

Its vast and azure dome; 
And on the verge of that obscure abyss 
Where crystal battlements o'erhang the 

gulf 
Of the dark world, ten thousand spheres 

diffuse 
Their lustre through its adamantine 
gates. 

The magic car no longer moved; 

The Daemon and the Spirit 

Entered the eternal gates. 

Those clouds of aery gold 

That slept in glittering billows 

Beneath the azure canopy, 
With the ethereal footsteps trembled not; 

While slight and odorous mists 
Floated to strains of thrilling melody 
Through the vast columns and the 
pearly shrines. 

The Daemon and the Spirit 
Approached the overhanging battlement. 
Below lay stretched the boundless uni- 
verse ! 

There, far as the remotest line 
That limits swift imagination's flight. 
Unending orbs mingled in mazy motion, 

Immutably fulfilling 



98 



THE DMMON OF THE WORLD. 



Eternal Nature's law. 
Above, below, around, 
The circling systems formed 
A wilderness of harmony, 
Each with undeviating aim 
In eloquent silence through the depths 
of space 
Pursued its wondrous way. — 



Awhile the Spirit paused in ecstasy. 

Yet soon she saw, as the vast spheres 
swept by. 

Strange things within their belted orbs 
appear. 

Like animated frenzies, dimly moved 

Shadows, and skeletons, and fiendly 
shapes. 

Thronging round human graves, and o'er 
the dead 

Sculpturing records for each memory 

In verse, such as malignant gods pro- 
nounce. 

Blasting the hopes of men, when heaven 
and hell 

Confounded burst in ruin o'er the world: 

And they did build vast trophies, in- 
struments 

Of murder, human bones, barbaric gold, 

Skins torn from living men, and towers 
of skulls 

With sightless holes gazing on blinder 
heaven, 

Mitres, and crowns, and brazen chariots 
stained 

With blood, and scrolls of mystic wick- 
edness. 

The sanguine codes of venerable crime. 

The likeness of a throned king came by. 

When these had past, bearing upon his 
brow 

A threefold crown; his countenance was 
calm, 

His eye severe and cold; but his right 
hand 

Was charged with bloody coin, and he 
did gnaw 

By fits, with secret smiles, a human 
heart 

Qsncealed beneath his robe; and motley 
shapes, 

A multitudinous throng, around him 
knelt, 



With bosoms bare, and bowed heads, 
and false looks 

Of true submission, as the sphere rolled 
.by, 

Brooking no eye to witness their foul 
shame, 

Which human hearts must feel, while 
human tongues 

Tremble to speak, they did rage horribly, 

Breathing in self contempt fierce blas- 
phemies 

Against the Daemon of the World, and 
high 

Hurling their armed hands where the 
pure Spirit, 

Serene and inaccessibly secure, 

Stood on an isolated pinnacle. 

The flood of ages combating below, 

The depth of the unbounded universe 
Above, and all around 

Necessity's unchanging harmony. 



Part II. 

O HAPPY Earth ! reality of Heaven ! 
To which those restless powers that 

ceaselessly 
Throng through the human universe, 

aspire; 
Thou consummation of all mortal hope ! 
Thou glorious prize of blindly-working 

will ! 
Whose rays, diffused throughout all space 

and time. 
Verge to one point and blend forever 

there ! 
Of purest spirits thou pure dwelling- 
place. 
Where care and sorrow, impotence and 

crime, 
Languor, disease, and ignorance dare not 

come: 
O happy Earth, reality of Heaven ! 

Genius has seen thee in her passionate 

dreams. 
And dim forebodings of thy loveliness 
Haunting the human heart have there 

entwined 
Those rooted hopes, that the proud 

Power of Evil 
Shall not forever on this fairest world 



THE D^MON OF THE WORLD. 



99 



Shake pestilence and war, or that his 
slaves 

With blasphemy for prayer, and human 
blood 

For sacrifice, before his shrine forever 

In adoration bend, or Erebus 

With all its banded fiends shall not uprise 

To overwhelm in envy and revenge 

The dauntless and the good, who dare to 
hurl 

Defiance at his throne, girt tho' it be 

With Death's omnipotence. Thou hast 
beheld 

His empire, o'er the present and the 
past; 

It was a desolate sight — now gaze on 
mine, 

Futurity. Thou hoary giant Time, 

Render thou up thy half-devoured 
babes, — 

And from the cradles of eternity. 

Where millions lie lulled to their por- 
tioned sleep 

By the deep murmuring stream of pass- 
ing things. 

Tear thou that gloomy shroud. — " Spirit, 
behold 

Thy glorious destiny ! " 

The Spirit saw 
The vast frame of the renovated world 
Smile in the lap of Chaos, and the sense 
Of hope thro' her fine texture did suffuse 
Such varying glow, as summer evening 

casts 
On undulating clouds and deepening 

lakes. 
Like the vague sighings of a wind at 

even. 
That wakes the wavelets of the slumber- 
ing sea 
And dies on the creation of its breath. 
And sinks and rises, fails and swells by 

fits, 
Was the sweet stream of thought that 

with wild motion 
Flowed o'er the Spirit's human sympa- 
thies. 
The mighty tide of thought had paused 

awhile. 
Which from the Daemon now like Ocean's 

stream 
\gain began to pour. — 



" To me is given 
The wonders of the human world to 

keep — 
Space, matter, time and mind — let the 

sight 
Renew and strengthen all thy failing 

hope. 
All things are recreated, and the flame 
Of consentaneous love inspires all life : 
The fertile bosom of the earth gives suck 
To myriads, who still grow beneath her 

care. 
Rewarding her with their pure perfect- 

ness: 
The balmy breathings of the wind inhale 
Her virtues, and diffuse them all abroad : 
Health floats amid the gentle atmosphere. 
Glows in the fruits, and mantles on the 

stream : 
No storms deform the beaming brow of 

heaven. 
Nor scatter in the freshness of its pride 
The foliage of the undecaying trees; 
But fruits are ever ripe, flowers ever fair, 
And Autumn proudly bears her matron 

grace, 
Kindling a flush on the fair cheek of 

Spring, 
Whose virgin bloom beneath the ruddy 

fruit 
Reflects its tint and blushes into love. 

The habitable earth is full of bliss; 
Those wastes of frozen billows that were 

hurled 
By everlasting snow-storms round the 

poles. 
Where matter dared not vegetate nor 

live. 
But ceaseless frost round the vast solitude 
Bound its broad zone of stillness, are 

unloosed; 
And fragrant zephyrs there from spicy 

isles 
Ruffle the placid ocean-deep, that rolls 
Its broad, bright surges to the sloping 

sand, 
Whose roar is wakened into echoings 

sweet 
To murmur through the heaven-breathing 

groves 
And melodize with man's blest nature 

there. 



lOO 



THE D^MOM OF THE WORLD. 



"The vast tract of the parched and 

sandy waste 
Now teems with countless rills and shady 

woods, 
Corn-fields and pastures and white cot- 
tages; 
And where the startled wilderness did 

hear 
A savage conqueror stained in kindred 

blood, 
Hymning his victory, or the milder snake 
Crushing the bones of some frail antelope 
Within his brazen folds — the dewy lawn, 
Offering sweet incense to the sunrise, 

smiles 
To see a babe before his mother's door, 
Share with the green and golden basilisk 
That comes to lick his feet, his morning's 

meal. 



" Those trackless deeps, where many 

a weary sail 
Has seen above the illimitable plain, 
Morning on night, and night on morning 

rise, 
Whilst still no land to greet the wanderer 

spread 
Its shadowy mountains on the sun-bright 

sea, 
Where the loud roarings of the tempest- 
waves 
So long have mingled with the gusty 

wind 
In melancholy loneliness, and swept 
The desert of those ocean solitudes,- 
But vocal to the sea-bird's harrowing 

shriek, 
The bellowing monster, and the rushing 

storm. 
Now to the sweet and many-mingling 

sounds 
Of kindliest human impulses respond: 
Those lonely realms bright garden-isles 

begem. 
With lightsome clouds and shining seas 

between. 
And fertile valleys, resonant with bliss. 
Whilst green woods overcanopy the 

wave, 
Which like a toil-worn laborer leaps to 

shore. 
To meet the kisses of the flowerets there. 



" Man chief perceives the change; his 

being notes 
The gradual renovation, and defines 
Each movement of its progress on his 

mind. 
Man, where the gloom of the long polar 

night 
Lowered o'er the snow-clad rocks and 

frozen soil, 
Where scarce the hardest herb that 

braves the frost 
Basked in the moonlight's ineffectual 

glow. 
Shrank with the plants, and darkened 

with the night; 
Nor where the tropics bound the realms 

of day 
With a broad belt of mingling cloud and 

flame. 
Where blue mists through the unmoving 

atmosphere 
Scattered the seeds of pestilence, and 

fed 
Unnatural vegetation, where the land 
Teemed with all earthquake, tempest and 

disease, 
Was man a nobler being; slavery 
Had crushed him to his country's blood- 
stained dust. 

*' Even where the milder zone afforded 
man 
A seeming shelter, yet contagion there. 
Blighting his being with unnumbered ills. 
Spread like a quenchless fire; nor truth 

availed 
Till late to arrest its progress, or create 
That peace which first in bloodless vic- 
tory waved 
Her snowy standard o'er this favored 

clime : 
There man was long the train-bearer of 

slaves, 
The mimic of surrounding misery, 
The jackal of ambition's lion-rage. 
The bloodhound of religion's hungry zeal. 

"Here now the human being stands 
adorning 

This loveliest earth with taintless body 
and mind; 

Blest from his birth with all bland im- 
pulses, 



THE D^MON OF THE WORLD. 



lOI 



Which gently in his noble bosom wake 
All kindly passions and all pure desires. 
Him, still from hope to hope the bliss pur- 
suing, 
Which from the exhaustless lore of 

human weal 
Draws on the virtuous mind, the thoughts 

that rise 
In time-destroying infiniteness, gift 
With self-enshrined eternity, that mocks 
The unprevailing hoariness of age. 
And man, once fleeting o'er the tran- 
sient scene 
Swift as an unremembered vision, stands 
Immortal upofl earth : no longer now 
He slays the beast that sports around his 

dwelling 
And horribly devours its mangled flesh. 
Or drinks its vital blood, which like a 

stream 
Of poison thro' his fevered veins did 

flow 
Feeding a plague that secretly consumed 
His feeble frame, and kindling in his 

mind 
Hatred, despair, and fear and vain 

belief. 
The germs of misery, death, disease, 

and crime. 
No longer now the winged habitants. 
That in the woods their sweet lives sing 

away. 
Flee from the form of man; but gather 

round. 
And prune their sunny feathers on the 

hands 
Which little children stretch in friendly 

sport 
Towards these dreadless partners of their 

play. 
All things are void of terror : man has 

lost 
His desolating privilege, and stands 
An equal amidst equals : happiness 
And science dawn though late upon the 

earth; 
Peace cheers the mind, health renovates 

the frame; 
Disease and pleasure cease to mingle 

here, 
Reason and passion cease to combat 

there; 



Whilst mind unfettered o'er the earth 

extends 
Its all-subduing energies, and wields 
The sceptre of a vast dominion there. 

" Mild is the slow necessity of death: 
The tranquil spirit fails beneath its 

grasp. 
Without a groan, almost without a fear, 
Resigned in peace to the necessity, 
Calm as a voyager to some distant land, 
And full of wonder, full of hope as he. 
The deadly germs of languor and disease 
Waste in the human frame, and Nature 

gifts 
With choicest boons her human wor- 
shippers. 
How vigorous now the athletic form of 

age! 
How clear its open and unwrinkled 

brow ! 
Where neither avarice, cunning, pride, 

or care. 
Had stamped the seal of gray deformity 
On all the mingling lineaments of time ! 
How lovely the intrepid front of youth ! 
How sweet the smiles of taintless in- 
fancy ! 

"Within the massy prison's moulder- 
ing courts. 

Fearless and free the ruddy children 
play. 

Weaving gay chaplets for their innocent 
brows 

With the green ivy and the red wall- 
flower. 

That mock the dungeon's unavailing 
gloom; 

The ponderous chains, and gratings of 
strong iron, 

There rust amid the accumulated ruins 

Now mingling slowly with their native 
earth; 

There the broad beam of day, which 
feebly once 

Lighted the cheek of lean captivity 

With a pale and sickly glare, now freely 
shines 

On the pure smiles of infant playfulness : 

No more the shuddering voice of hoarse 
despair 



t02 



THE D^MON OF THE WORLD. 



Peals through the echoing vaults, but 

soothing notes 
Of ivy-fingered winds and gladsome 

birds 
And merriment are resonant around. 

"The fanes of Fear and Falsehood 

hear no more 
The voice that once waked multitudes to 

war 
Thundering thro' all their aisles: but 

now respond 
To the death dirge of the melancholy 

wind : 
It were a sight of awfulness to see 
The works of faith and slavery, so vast, 
So sumptuous, yet withal so perishing ! 
Even as the corpse that rests beneath 

their wall ! 
A thousand mourners deck the pomp of 

death 
To-day, the breathing marble glows 

above 
To decorate its memory, and tongues 
Are busy of its life; tomorrow, worms 
In silence and in darkness seize their prey. 
These ruins soon leave not a wreck be- 
hind: 
Their elements, wide-scattered o'er the 

globe, 
To happier shapes are moulded, and be- 
come 
Ministrant to all blissful impulses : 
Thus human things are perfected, and 

earth. 
Even as a child beneath its mother's 

love. 
Is strengthened in all excellence, and 

grows 
Fairer and nobler with each passing year. 

"Now Time his dusky pennons o'er 
the scene 

Closes in steadfast darkness, and the 
past 

Fades from our charmed sight. My task 
is done : 

TTiy lore is learned. Earth's wonders 
are thine own. 

With all the fear and all the hope they 
bring. 

My spells are past : the present now re- 
curs. 



Ah me ! a pathless wilderness remains 
Yet unsubdued by man's reclaiming 
hand. 

" Yet, human Spirit, bravely hold thy 

course. 
Let virtue teach thee firmly to pursue 
The gradual paths of an aspiring change : 
For birth and life and death, and that 

strange state 
Before the naked powers that thro' the 

world 
Wander like winds, have found a human 

home. 
All tend to perfect happiness, and urge 
The restless wheels of being on their 

way, 
Whose flashing spokes, instinct with vd^ 

finite life, 
Bicker and burn to gain their destined 

goal : 
For birth but wakes the universal mind 
Whose mighty streams might else in 

silence flow 
Thro' the vast world, to individual sense 
Of outward shows, whose unexperienced 

shape 
New modes of passion to its frame may 

lend; 
Life is its state of action, and the store 
Of all events is aggregated there 
That variegate the eternal universe; 
Death is a gate of dreariness and gloom, 
That leads to azure isles and beaming 

skies 
And happy regions of eternal hope. 
Therefore, O Spirit ! fearlessly bear on : 
Though storms may break the primrose 

on its stalk, 
Though frosts may blight the freshness 

of its bloom. 
Yet spring's awakening breath will woo 

the earth. 
To feed with kindliest dews its favorite 

flower. 
That blooms in mossy banks and dark- 
some glens. 
Lighting the green wood with its sunny 

smile. 

"Fear not then, Spirit, death's disrob- 
ing hand. 
So welcome when the tyrant is awake, 



THE D^MON OF THE WORLD. 



103 



So welcome when the bigot's hell-torch 

flares; 
'T is but the voyage of a darksome hour, 
The transient gulf-dream of a startling 

sleep. 
For what thou art shall perish utterly, 
But what is thine may never cease to be; 
Death is no foe to virtue : earth has seen 
Love's brightest roses on the scaffold 

bloom, 
Mingling with freedom's fadeless laurels 

there, 
And presaging the truth of visioned bliss. 
Are there not hopes within thee, which 

this scene 
Of linked and gradual being has con- 
firmed? 
Hopes that not vainly thou, and living 

fires 
Of mind, as radiant and as pure as thou 
Have shone upon the paths of men — 

return. 
Surpassing Spirit, to that world, where 

thou 
Art destined an eternal war to wage 
With tyranny and falsehood, and uproot 
The germs of misery from the human 

heart. 
Thine is the hand whose piety would 

soothe 
The thorny pillow of unhappy crime, 
Whose impotence an easy pardon gains, 
Watching its wanderings as a friend's 

disease : 
Thine is the brow whose mildness would 

defy 
Its fiercest rage, and brave its sternest 

will, 
When fenced by power and master of 

the world. 
Thou art sincere and good; of resolute 

mind. 
Free from heart-withering custom's cold 

control. 
Of passion lofty, pure and unsubdued. 
Earth's pride and meanness could not 

vanquish thee. 
And therefore art thou worthy of the 

boon 
Which thou hast now received: virtue 

shall keep 



Thy footsteps in the path that thott hsst 

trod, 
And many days of beaming hope shall 

bl-iss 
Thy spotless life of sweet and sacied 

love. 
Go, happy one, and give that bosom joy 
Whose sleepless spiric waits to catch 
Light, life and rapture from thy 

smile," 



The Daemon called its winged minis- 
ters. 
Speechless with bliss the Spirit mounts 

the car. 
That rolled beside the crystal battlement, 
Bending her beamy eyes in thankfulness. 

The burning wheels inflame 
The steep descent of Heaven's untrod- 
den way. 
Fast and far the chariot flew: 
The mighty globes that rolled 
Around the gate of the Eternal Fane 
Lessened by slow degrees, and soon ap- 
peared 
Such tiny twinklers as the planet orbs 
That ministering on the solar power 
With borrowed light pursued their nar- 
rower way. 
Earth floated then below : 
The chariot paused a moment; 
The Spirit then descended : 
And from the earth departing 
The shadows with swift wings 
Speeded like thought upon the light of 
Heaven. 



The Body and the Soul united then, 
A gentle start convulsed lanthe's frame: 
Her veiny eyelids quietly unclosed; 
Moveless awhile the dark blue orbs re- 
mained : 
She looked around in wonder and beheld 
Henry, who kneeled in silence by her 

couch. 
Watching her sleep with looks of speech- 
less love. 
And the bright beaming stars 
That through the casement shone. 



ro4 



A LAS TOR; OR 



ALASTOR; 

OR 

THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE. 

PREFACE. 

The poem entitled Alastor may be 
considered as allegorical of one of the 
most interesting situations of the human 
mind. It represents a youth of uncor- 
rupted feelings and adventurous genius 
led forth by an imagination inflamed and 
purified through familiarity with all that 
is excellent and majestic, to the contem- 
plation of the universe. He drinks deep 
of the fountains of knowledge, and is 
still insatiate. The magnificence and 
beauty of the external world sinks pro- 
foundly into the frame of his conceptions, 
and affords to their modifications a variety 
not to be exhausted. So long as it is 
possible for his desires to point towards 
objects thus infinite and unmeasured, he 
is joyous, and tranquil, and self-possessed. 
But the period arrives when these objects 
cease to suffice. His mind is at length 
suddenly awakened and thirsts for inter- 
course with an intelligence similar to it- 
self. He images to himself the Being 
whom he loves. Conversant with spec- 
ulations of the sublimest and most perfect 
natures, the vision in which he embodies 
his own imaginations unites all of won- 
derful, or wise, or beautiful, which the 
poet, the philosopher, or the lover could 
depicture. The intellectual faculties, the 
imagination, the functions of sense, have 
their respective requisitions on the sym- 
pathy of corresponding powers in other 
human beings. The Poet is represented 
as uniting these requisitions, and attach- 
ing them to a single image. He seeks 
in vain for a prototype of his conception. 
Blasted by his disappointment, he de- 
scends to an untimely grave. 

The picture is not barren of instruc- 
tion to actual men. The Poet's self- 
centred seclusion was avenged by the 
furies of an irresistible passion pursuing 
him to speedy ruin. But that Power 



which strikes the luminaries of the world 
with sudden darkness and extinction, by 
awakening them to too exquisite a per- 
ception of its influences, dooms to a slow 
and poisonous decay those meaner spirits 
that dare to abjure its dominion. Their 
destiny is more abject and inglorious as 
their delinquency is more contemptible 
and pernicious. They who, deluded by 
no generous error, instigated by no 
sacred thirst of doubtful knowledge, 
duped by no illustrious superstition, lov- 
ing nothing on this earth, and cherishing 
no hopes beyond, yet keep aloof from 
sympathies with their kind, rejoicing 
neither in human joy nor mourning with 
human grief; these, and such as they, 
have their apportioned curse. They lan- 
guish, because none feel with them their 
common nature. They are morally 
dead. They are neither friends, nor 
lovers, nor fathers, nor citizens of the 
world, nor benefactors of their country. 
Among those who attempt to exist with- 
out human sympathy, the pure and 
tender-hearted perish through the in- 
tensity and passion of their search after 
its communities, when the vacancy of 
their spirit suddenly makes itself felt. 
All else, selfish, blind, and torpid, are 
those unforeseeing multitudes who con- 
stitute, together with their own, the last- 
ing misery and loneliness of the world. 
Those who love not their fellow-beings 
live unfruitful lives, and prepare for 
their old age a miserable grave. 

" The good die first, 
And those whose hearts are dry as summer dust, 
Burn to the socket ! " 

December 14, 1815. 



Nondum amabam, et amare amabam, quaere- 
bam quid amarem, amans amare. — Confess. St. 
A ugiist. 

Earth, ocean, air, beloved brother- 
hood ! 
If our great Mother has imbued my soul 
With aught of natural piety to feel 
Your love, and recompense the boon 
with mine; 



THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE. 



105 



If dewy morn, and odorous noon, and 

even. 
With sunset and its gorgeous ministers, 
And solemn midnight's tingling silent- 

ness; 
If autumn's hollow sighs in the sere 

wood. 
And winter robing with pure snow and 

crowns 
Of starry ice the gray grass and bare 

boughs; 
If spring's voluptuous pantings when 

she breathes 
Her first sweet kisses, have been dear 

to me; 
If no bright bird, insect, or gentle beast 
I consciously have injured, but still 

loved 
And cherished these my kindred; then 

forgive 
This boast, beloved brethren, and with- 
draw 
No portion of your wonted favor now ! 

' Mother of this unfathomable world ! 

Favor my solemn song, for I have 
loved 

Thee ever, and thee only; I have 
watched 

'Thy shadow, and the darkness of thy 
steps. 

And my heart ever gazes on the depth 

Of thy deep mysteries. I have made 
my bed 

In charnels and on coffins, where black 
death 

Keeps record of the trophies won from 
thee. 

Hoping to still these obstinate ques- 
tionings 

Of thee and thine, by forcing some lone 
ghost, 

Thy messenger, to render up the tale 

Of what we are. In lone and silent 
hours. 

When night makes a weird sound of its 
own stillness, 

Like an inspired and desperate alche- 
mist 

Staking his very life on some dark hope, 

Have I mixed awful talk and asking 
looks 



With my most innocent love, until 

strange tears 
Uniting with those breathless kisses, 

made 
Such magic as compels the charmed night 
To render up thy charge : and, tho' ne'er 

yet 
Thou hast unveiled thy inmost sanctuary, 
Enough from incommunicable dream, 
And twilight phantasms, and deep noon- 
day thought. 
Has shone within me, that serenely now 
And moveless, as a long-forgotten lyre 
Suspended in the solitary dome 
Of some mysterious and deserted fane, 
I wait thy breath. Great Parent, that my 

strain 
May modulate with murmurs of the air, 
And motions of the forests and the sea 
And voice of living beings, and woven 

hymns 
Of night and day, and the deep heart of 

man. 

There was a Poet whose untimely tomb 

No human hands with pious reverence 
reared. 

But the charmed eddies of autumnal 
winds 

Built o'er his mouldering bones a pyra- 
mid 

Of mouldering leaves in the waste wilder- 
ness : — 

A lovely youth, — no mourning maiden 
decked 

With weeping flowers, or votive cypress 
wreath, 

The lone couch of his everlasting sleep : — 

Gentle, and brave, and generous, — no 
lorn bard 

Breathed o'er his dark fate one melodious 
sigh: 

He lived, he died, he sung, in solitude. 

Strangers have wept to hear his passion- 
ate notes, 

And virgins, as unknown he passed, have 
pined 

And wasted for fond love of his wild eyes. 

The fire of those soft orbs has ceased to 
burn. 

And Silence, too enamored of that voice, 

Locks its mute music in her rugged cell. 



io6 



A LAS TOR; OR 



By solemn vision, and bright silver 
dream, 
His infancy was nurtured. Every sight 
And sound from the vast earth and am- 
bient air 
Sent to his heart its choicest impulses. 
The fountains of divine philosophy 
Fled not his thirsting lips, and all of 

great, 
Or good, or lovely, which the sacred past 
In truth or fable consecrates, he felt 
And knew. When early youth had 

passed, he left 
His cold fireside and alienated home 
To seek strange truths in undiscovered 

lands. 
Many a wide waste and tangled wilder- 
ness 
Has lured his fearless steps; and he has 

bought 
With his sweet voice and eyes, from 

savage men, 
His rest and food. Nature's most secret 

steps 
He like her shadow has pursued, where'er 
The red volcano overcanopies 
Its fields of snow and pinnacles of ice 
With burning smoke, or where bitumen 

lakes 
On black bare pointed islets ever beat 
With sluggish surge, or where the secret 

caves 
Rugged and dark, winding among the 

springs 
Of fire and poison, inaccessible 
To avarice or pride, their starry domes 
Of diamond and of gold expand above 
Numberless and immeasurable halls, 
Frequent with crystal column, and clear 

shrines 
Of pearl and thrones radiant with chryso- 
lite. 
Nor had that scene of ampler majesty 
Than gems or gold, the varying roof of 

heaven 
And the green earth lost in his heart its 

claims 
To love and wonder; he would linger 

long 
In lonesome vales, making the wild his 

home. 
Until the doves and squirrels would par- 
take 



From his innocuous hand his bloodless 

food, 
Lured by the gentle meaning of his looks, 
And the wild antelope, that starts when- 
e'er 
The dry leaf rustles in the brake, suspend 
Her timid steps to gaze upon a form 
More graceful than her own. 

His wandering step 
Obedient to high thoughts, has visited 
The awful ruins of the days of old : 
Athens, and Tyre, and Balbec, and the 

waste 
Where stood Jerusalem, the fallen towers 
Of Babylon, the eternal pyramids, 
Memphis and Thebes, and whatsoe'er of 

strange, 
Sculptured on alabaster obelisk. 
Or jasper tomb, or mutilated sphinx, 
Dark Ethiopia in her desert hills 
Conceals. Among the ruined temples j 

there. 
Stupendous columns, and wild images 
Of more than man, where marble daemons 

watch 
The Zodiac's brazen mystery, and dead 

men 
Hang their mute thoughts on the mute 1 

walls around, f 

He Imgered, poring on memorials 
Of the world's youth; through the long 

burning day 
Gazed on those speechless shapes; nor, 

when the moon 
Filled the mysterious halls with floating 

shades 
Suspended he that task, but ever gazed 
And gazed, till meaning on his vacant 

mind 
Flashed like strong inspiration, and he 

saw 
The thrilling secrets of the birth of time. 

Meanwhile an Arab maiden brought 

his food. 
Her daily portion, from her father's tent, 
And spread her matting for his couch, 

and stole 
From duties and repose to tend his 

steps : — 
Enamored, yet not daring for deep awe 
To speak her love : — and watched his 

nightly sleep, 



THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE. 



10'; 



Sleepless herself, to gaze upon his lips 

Parted in slumber, whence the regular 
breath 

Of innocent dreams arose : then, when 
red morn 

Made paler the pale moon, to her cold 
home 

Wildered and wan and panting, she re- 
turned. 

The Poet wandering on, through Arabic 
And Persia, and the wild Carmanian 

waste. 
And o'er the aerial mountains which pour 

down 
Indus and Oxus from their icy caves. 
In joy and exultation held his way; 
Till in the vale of Cashmire, far within 
Its loneliest dell, where odorous plants 

entwine 
Beneath the hollow rocks a natural 

bower. 
Beside a sparkling rivulet he stretched 
His languid limbs. A vision on his sleep 
There came, a dream of hopes that never 

yet 
Had flushed his cheek. He dreamed a 

veiled maid 
Sate near him, talking in low solemn 

tones. 
Her voice was like the voice of his own 

soul 
Heard in the calm of thought; its music 

long, 
Like woven sounds of streams and 

breezes, held 
His inmost sense suspended in its web 
Of many-colored woof and shifting hues. 
Knowledge and truth and virtue were 

her theme, 
And lofty hopes of divine liberty, 
Thoughts the most dear to him, and 

poesy, 
Herself a poet. Soon the solemn mood 
Of her pure mind kindled through all her 

frame 
A permeating fire : wild numbers then 
She raised, with voice stifled in tremu- 
lous sobs 
Subdued by its own pathos: her fair 

hands 
Were bare alone, sweeping from some 

strange harp 



Strange symphony, and in their branch- 
ing veins 
The eloquent blood told an ineffable tale. 
The beating of her heart was heard to fill 
The pauses of her music, and her breath 
Tumultuously accorded with those fits 
Of intermitted song. Sudden she rose, 
As if her heart impatiently endured 
Its bursting burden: at the sound he 

turned. 
And saw by the warm light of their own 

life 
Her glowing limbs beneath the sinuous 

veil 
Of woven wind, her outspread arms now 

bare. 
Her dark locks floating in the breath of 

night. 
Her beamy bending eyes, her parted lips 
Outstretched and pale, and quivering 

eagerly. 
His strong heart sunk and sickened with 

excess 
Of love. He reared his shuddering limbs 

and quelled 
His gasping breath, and spread his arms 

to meet 
Her panting bosom: . . . she drew back 

awhile, 
Then, yielding co the irresistible joy. 
With frantic gesture and short breathless 

cry 
Folded his frame in her dissolving arms. 
Now blackness veiled his dizzy eyes, and 

night 
Involved and swallowed up the vision; 

sleep, 
Like a dark flood suspended in its course. 
Rolled back its impulse on his vacant 

brain. 

Roused by the shock he started from 

his trance — 
The cold white light of morning, the blue 

moon 
Low in the west, the clear and garish hills. 
The distinct valley and the vacant woods, 
Spread round him where he stood. 

Whither have fled 
The hues of heaven that canopied his 

bower 
Of yesternight ? The sounds that soothed 

his sleep, 



io8 



ALAS TOR; OR 



The mystery and the majesty of Earth, 
The joy, the exultation? His wan eyes 
Gaze on the empty scene as vacantly 
As ocean's moon looks on the moon in 

heaven. 
The spirit of sweet human love has sent 
A vision to the sleep of him who spurned 
Her choicest gifts. He eagerly pursues 
Beyond the realms of dream that fleeting 

shade; 
He overleaps the bounds. Alas ! alas ! 
Were limbs, and breath, and being inter- 
twined 
Thus treacherously? Lost, lost, forever 

lost, 
In the wide pathless desert of dim sleep. 
That beautiful shape ! Does the dark gate 

of death 
Conduct to thy mysterious paradise, 
O Sleep? Does the bright arch of rain- 
bow clouds. 
And pendent mountains seen in the calm 

lake, 
Lead only to a black and watery depth, 
While death's blue vault, with loathliest 

vapors hung, 
Where every shade which the foul grave 

exhales 
Hides its dead eye from the detested day. 
Conducts, O Sleep, to thy delightful 

realms? 
This doubt with sudden tide flowed on his 

heart; 
The insatiate hope which it awakened 

stung 
His brain even like despair. 

While daylight held 
The sky, the Poet kept mute conference 
With his still soul. At night the passion 

came. 
Like the fierce fiend of a distempered 

dream. 
And shook him from his rest, and led 

him forth 
Into the darkness. — As an eagle, grasped 
In folds of the green serpent, feels her 

breast 
Burn with the poison, and precipitates 
Through night and day, tempest and 

calm and cloud, 
Frantic with dizzying anguish, her blind 

flight 



O'er the wide aery wilderness: thus 

driven 
By the bright shadow of that lovely dream, 
Beneath the cold glare of the desolate 

night, 
Through tangled swamps and dc-p pre- 
cipitous dells. 
Startling with careless step the moon-light 

snake. 
He fled. Red morning dawned upon his 

flight, 
Shedding the mockery of its vital hues 
Upon his cheek of death. He wandered 

on 
Till vast Aornos seen from Petra's steep 
Hung o'er the low horizon like a cloud; 
Through Balk, and where the desolated 

tombs 
Of Parthian kings scatter to every wind 
Their wasting dust, wildly he wandered 

on. 
Day after day, a weary waste of hours, 
Bearing within his life the brooding care 
That ever fed on its decaying flame. 
And now his limbs were lean; his scat- 
tered hair 
Sered by the autumn of strange suffering 
Sung dirges in the wind; his listless hand 
Hung like dead bone within its withered 

skin ; ' 

Life, and the lustre that consumed it, 

shone 
As in a furnace burning secretly 
From his dark eyes alone. The cottagers, 
Who ministered with human charity 
His human wants, beheld with wondering 

awe 
Their fleeting visitant. The mountaineer, 
Encountering on some dizzy precipice 
That spectral form, deemed that the 

Spirit of wind 
With lightning eyes, and eager breath, 

and feet 
Disturbing not the drifted snow, had 

paused 
In its career: the infant would conceal 
His troubled visage in his mother's robe 
In terror at the glare of those wild eyes, 
To remember their strange light in many 

a dream 
Of after-times; but youthful maidens, 

taught 



THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE. 



lOO 



By nature, would interpret half the woe 

lliat wasted him, would call him with 
false names 

Brother, and friend, would press his pal- 
lid hand 

At parting, and watch, dim through tears, 
the path 

Of his departure from their father's door. 



At length upon the lone Chorasmian 

shore 
He paused, a wide and melancholy waste 
Of putrid marshes. A strong impulse 

urged 
His steps to the sea-shore. A swan was 

there. 
Beside a sluggish stream among the reeds. 
It rose as he approached, and with strong 

wings t 

Scaling the upward sky, bent its bright 

course 
High over the immeasurable main. 
His eyes pursued its flight, — "Thou 

hast a home. 
Beautiful bird; thou voyagest to thine 

home, 
Where thy sweet mate will twine her 

downy neck 
With thine, and welcome thy return with 

eyes 
Bright in the lustre of their own fond joy. 
And what am I that I should linger here, 
With voice far sweeter than thy dying 

notes. 
Spirit more vast than thine, frame more 

attuned 
To beauty, wasting these surpassing 

powers 
In the deaf air, to the blind earth, and 

heaven 
That echoes not my thoughts? " A 

gloomy smile 
Of desperate hope wrinkled his quivering 

lips. 
For sleep, he knew, kept most relent- 
lessly 
Its precious charge, and silent death ex- 
posed, 
Faithless perhaps as sleep, a shadowy 

lure, 
With doubtful smile mocking its own 

strange charms. 



Startled by his own thoughts he looked 

around. 
There was no fair fiend near him, not a 

sight 
Or sound of awe but in his own deep 

mind. 
A little shallop floating near the shore 
Caught the impatient wandering of his 

gaze. 
It had been long abandoned, for its sides 
Gaped wide with many a rift, and its 

frail joints 
Swayed with the undulations of the tide. 
A restless impulse urged him to embark 
And meet lone Death on the drear 

ocean's waste; 
For well he knew that mighty Shadow 

loves 
The slimy caverns of the populous deep. 

The day was fair and sunny; sea and 
sky 

Drank its inspiring radiance, and the 
wind 

Swept strongly from the shore, blacken- 
ing the waves. 

Following his eager soul, the wanderer 

Leaped in the boat; he spread his cloak 
aloft 

On the bare mast, and took his lonely 
seat. 

And felt the boat speed o'er the tranquil 
sea 

Like a torn cloud before the hurricane. 

As one that in a silver vision floats 
Obedient to the sweep of odorous winds 
Upon resplendent clouds, so rapidly 
Along the dark and ruffled waters fled 
The straining boat. A whirlwind swept 

it on, 
With fierce gusts and precipitating force. 
Through the white ridges of the chafed 

sea. 
The waves arose. Higher and higher 

still 
Their fierce necks writhed beneath the 

tempest's scourge 
Like serpents struggling in a vulture's 

grasp. 
Calm and rejoicing in the fearful war 
Of wave ruining on wave, and blast on 

blast 



no 



A LAS TOR; OR 



Descending, and black flood on whirl- 
pool driven 
With dark obliterating course, he sate : 
As if their genii were the ministers 
Appointed to conduct him to the light 
Of those beloved eyes, the Poet sate 
Holding the steady helm. Evening came 

on, 
The beams of sunset hung their rainbow 

hues 
High 'mid the shifting domes of sheeted 

spray 
That canopied his path o'er the waste 

deep; 
Twilight, ascending slowly from the east, 
Entwined in duskier wreaths her braided 

locks 
O'er the fair front and radiant eyes of 

day; 
Night followed, clad with stars. On 

every side 
More horribly the multitudinous streams 
Of ocean's mountainous waste to mutual 

war 
Rushed in dark tumult thundering, as to 

mock 
The calm and spangled sky. The little 

boat 
Still fled before the storm; still fled, like 

foam 
Down the steep cataract of a wintry river; 
Now pausing on the edge of the riven 

wave; 
Now leaving far behind the bursting 

mass 
That fell, convulsing ocean ; safely 

fled — 
As if that frail and wasted human form, 
Had been an elemental god. 

At midnight 
The moon arose : and lo ! the ethereal 

cliffs 
Of Caucasus, whose icy summits shone 
Among the stars like sunlight, and around 
Whose caverned base the whirlpools and 

the waves 
Bursting and eddying irresistibly 
Rage and resound forever. — Who shall 

save ? — 
The boat fled on, — the boiling torrent 

drove, — 
The crags closed round with black and 

jagged arms, 



The shattered mountain overhung the 

sea, 
And faster still, beyond all human speed, 
Suspended on the sweep of the smooth 

wave, 
The little boat was driven. A cavern 

there 
Yawned, and amid its slant and winding 

depths 
Ingulfed the rushing sea. The boat 

fled on 
With unrelaxing speed. — "Vision and 

Love! " 
The Poet cried aloud, " I have beheld 
The path of thy departure. Sleep and 

death 
Shall not divide us long ! " 

The boat pursued 
The windings of the^cavern. Daylight 

shone 
At length upon that gloomy river's flow; 
Now, where the fiercest war among the 

waves 
Is calm, on the unfathomable stream 
The boat moved slowly. Where the 

mountain, riven, 
Exposed those black depths to the azure 

sky. 
Ere yet the flood's enormous volume fell 
Even to the base of Caucasus, with sound 
That shook the everlasting rocks, the 

mass 
Filled with one whirlpool all that ample 

chasm ; 
Stair above stair the eddying waters rose, 
Circling immeasurably fast, and laved 
With alternating dash the gnarled roots 
Of mighty trees, that stretched their giant 

arms 
In darkness over it. P the midst was 

left. 
Reflecting, yet distorting every cloud, 
A pool of treacherous and tremendous 

calm. 
Seized by the sway of the ascending 

stream. 
With dizzy swiftness, round and round 

and round. 
Ridge after ridge the straining boat arose, 
Till on the verge of the extremest curve, 
Where, through an opening of the rocky 

bank, 



THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE. 



Ill 



The waters overflow, and a smooth spot 

Of glassy quiet mid those battling tides 

Is left, the boat paused shuddering. — 
Shall it sink 

Down the abyss ! Shall the reverting 
stress 

Of that resistless gulf embosom it? 

Now shall it fall ? — A wandering stream 
of wind, 

Breathed from the west, has caught the 
expanded sail. 

And, lo ! with gentle motion, between 
banks 

Of mossy slope, and on a placid stream, 

Beneath a woven grove it sails, and, 
hark! 

The ghastly torrent mingles its far roar. 

With the breeze murmuring in the musi- 
cal woods. 

Where the embowering trees recede, and 
leave 

A little space of green expanse, the cove 

Is closed by meeting banks, whose yellow 
flowers 

Forever gaze on their own drooping eyes. 

Reflected in the crystal calm. The 
wave 

Of the boat's motion marred their pen- 
sive task, 

Which naught but vagrant bird, or wanton 
wind, 

Or falling spear-grass, or their own decay 

Had e'er disturbed before. The Poet 
longed 

To deck with their bright hues his with- 
ered hair. 

But on his heart its solitude returned, 

And he forbore. Not the strong impulse 
hid 

In those flushed cheeks, bent eyes, and 
shadowy frame 

Had yet performed its ministry : it hung 

Upon his life, as lightning in a cloud 

Gleams, hovering ere it vanish, ere the 
floods 

Of night close over it. 

The noonday sun 

Now shone upon the forest, one vast 
mass 

Of mingling shade, whose brown mag- 
nificence 

A narrow vale embosoms. There, huge 
caves, 



Scooped in the dark base of their aery 

rocks 
Mocking its moans, respond and roar 

forever. 
The meeting boughs and implicated 

leaves 
Wove twilight o'er the Poet's path, as, led 
By love, or dream, or God, or mightier 

Death, 
He sought in Nature's dearest haunt, 

some bank. 
Her cradle, and his sepulchre. More 

dark 
And dark the shades accumulate. The 

oak. 
Expanding its immense and knotty arms. 
Embraces the light beech. The pyra- 
mids 
Of the tall cedar overarching frame 
Most solemn domes within, and far 

below. 
Like clouds suspended in an emerald 

sky. 
The ash and the acacia floating hang 
Tremulous and pale. Like restless 

serpents, clothed • 
In rainbow and in fire, the parasites, 
Starred with ten thousand blossoms, flow 

around 
The gray trunks, and, as gamesome 

infants' eyes. 
With gentle meanings, and most innocent 

wiles. 
Fold their beams round the hearts of 

those that love, 
These twine their tendrils with the 

wedded boughs. 
Uniting their close union; the woven 

leaves 
Make net-work of the dark blue light of 

day. 
And the night's noontide clearness, 

mutable 
As shapes in the weird clouds. Soft 

mossy lawns 
Beneath these canopies extend their 

swells. 
Fragrant with perfumed herbs, and eyed 

with blooms 
Minute yet beautiful. One darkest glen 
Sends from its woods of musk-rose, 

twined with jasmine, 
A soul-dissolving odor, to invite 



112 



ALASTOR; OR 



To some more lovely mystery. Through 

the dell, 
Silence and Twilight here, twin-sisters, 

keep 
Their noonday watch, and sail among 

the shades, 
Like vaporous shapes half seen; beyond, 

a well. 
Dark, gleaming, and of most translucent 

wave. 
Images all the woven boughs above. 
And each depending leaf, and every 

speck 
Of azure sky, darting between their 

chasms; 
Nor aught else in the liquid mirror laves 
Its portraiture, but some inconstant star 
Between one foliaged lattice twinkling 

fair. 
Or painted bird, sleeping beneath the 

moon, 
Or gorgeous insect floating motionless, 
Unconscious of the day, ere yet his wings 
Have spread their glories to the gaze of 

noon. 



Hither the Poet came. His eyes 

beheld 
Their own wan light through the re- 
flected lines 
Of his thin hair, distinct in the dark 

depth 
Of that still fountain; as the human 

heart, 
Gazing in dreams over the gloomy grave, 
Sees its own treacherous likeness there. 

He heard 
The motion of the leaves, the grass that 

sprung 
Startled and glanced and trembled even 

to feel 
An unaccustomed presence, and the 

sound 
Of the sweet brook that from the secret 

springs 
Of that dark fountain rose. A Spirit 

seemed 
To stand beside him — clothed in no 

bright robes 
Of shadowy silver or enshrining light, 
Borrowed from aught the visible world 

affords 



Of grace, or majesty, or mystery; — 
But undulating woods, and silent well, 
And leaping rivulet, and evening glo^^n 
Now deepening the dark shades, for 

speech assuming. 
Held commune with him, as if he and it 
Were all that was, — only . . . when 

his regard 
Was raised by intense pensiveness, . . . 

two eyes, 
Two starry eyes, hung in the gloom of 

thought, 
And seemed with their serene and azure 

smiles 
To beckon him. 

Obedient to the light 
That shone within his soul, he went, 

pursuing 
The windings of the dell. The rivulet 
Wanton and wild, through many a green 

ravine 
Beneath the forest flowed. Sometimes it 

fell 
Among the moss with hollow harmony 
Dark and profound. Now on the pol- 
ished stones 
It danced, like childhood laughing as it 

went: 
Then through the plain in tranquil 

wanderings crept. 
Reflecting every herb and drooping bud 
That overhung itsquietness. — "O stream ! 
Whose source is inaccessibly profound, 
Whither do thy mysterious waters tend? 
Thou imagest my life. Thy darksome 

stillness, 
Thy dazzling waves, thy loud and hollow 

gulfs. 
Thy searchless fountain, and invisible 

course 
Have each their type in me: and the 

wide sky. 
And measureless ocean may declare as 

soon 
What oozy cavern or what wandering 

cloud 
Contains thy waters, as the universe 
Tell where these living thoughts reside, 

when stretched 
Upon thy flowers my bloodless limbs 

shall waste 
r the passing wind ! " 



THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE. 



113 



Beside the grassy shore 
Of the small stream he went; he did 

impress 
On the green moss his tremulous step, 

that caught 
Strong shuddering from his burning 

limbs. As one 
Roused by some joyous madness from 

the couch 
Of fever, he did move; yet not like him 
Forgetful of the grave, where, when the 

flame 
Of his frail exultation shall be spent, 
He must descend. With rapid steps he 

went 
Beneath the shade of trees, beside the 

flow 
Of the wild babbling rivulet; and now 
The forest's solemn canopies were 

changed 
For the uniform and lightsome evening 

sky. 
Gray rocks did peep from the spare 

moss, and stemmed 
The struggling brook : tall spires of 

windlestrae 
Threw their thin shadows down the 

rugged slope, 
And naught but gnarled roots of ancient 

pines 
Branchless and blasted, clenched with 

grasping roots 
The unwilling soil. A gradual change 

was here, 
Yet ghastly. For, as fast years flow 

away, 
The smooth brow gathers, and the hair 

grows thin 
And white, and where irradiate dewy 

eyes 
Had shone, gleam stony orbs: — so from 

his steps 
Bright flowers departed, and the beauti- 
ful shade 
Of the green groves, with all their odor- 
ous winds 
And musical motions. Calm, he still 

pursued 
The stream, that with a larger volume now 
Rolled through the labyrinthine dell; and 

there 
Fretted a path through its descending 

curves, 



With its wintry speed. On every side 

now rose 
Rocks, which, in unimaginable forms. 
Lifted their black and barren pinnacles 
In the light of evening, and, its precipice 
Obscuring the ravine^ disclosed above. 
Mid toppling stones, black gulfs and 

yawning caves. 
Whose windings gave ten thousand vari- 
ous tongues 
To the loud stream. Lo ! where the pass 

expands 
Its stony jaws, the abrupt mountain 

breaks. 
And seems, with its accumulated crags, 
To overhang the world : for wide expand 
Beneath the wan stars and descending 

moon 
Islanded seas, blue mountains, mighty 

streams, 
Dim tracts and vast, robed in the lustrous 

gloom 
Of leaden-colored even, and fiery hills 
Mingling their flames with twilight, on 

the verge 
Of the remote horizon. The near scene, 
In naked and severe simplicity, 
Made contrast with the universe. A 

pine. 
Rock-rooted, stretched athwart the 

vacancy 
Its swinging boughs, to each inconstant 

blast 
Yielding one only response, at each pause 
In most familiar cadence, with the howl. 
The thunder and the hiss of homeless 

streams 
Mingling its solemn song, whilst the 

broad river, 
Foaming and hurrying o'er its rugged 

path. 
Fell into that immeasurable void 
Scattering its waters to the passing winds. 

Yet the gray precipice and solemn pine 
And torrent were not all; — one silent 

nook 
Was there. Even on the edge of that 

vast mountain, 
Upheld by knotty roots and fallen rocks, 
It overlooked in its serenity 
The dark earth, and the bending vault 

of stars. 



114 



A LAS TOR; OR 



It was a tranquil spot, that seemed to 

smile 
Even in the lap of horror. Ivy clasped 
The fissured stones with its entwining 

arms, 
And did embower with leaves forever 

green, 
And berries dark, the smooth and even 

space 
Of its inviolated floor; and here 
The children of the autumnal whirlwind 

bore. 
In wanton sport, those bright leaves, 

whose decay. 
Red, yellow, or ethereally pale. 
Rivals the pride of summer. 'T is the 

haunt 
Of every gentle wind, whose breath can 

teach 
The wilds to love tranquillity. One step. 
One human step alone, has ever broken 
The stillness of its solitude; — one voice 
Alone inspired its echoes; — even that 

voice 
Which hither came, floating among the 

winds. 
And led the loveliest among human 

forms 
To make their wild haunts the depository 
Of all the grace and beauty that endued 
Its motions, render up its majesty. 
Scatter its music on the unfeeling storm. 
And to the damp leaves and blue cavern 

mould. 
Nurses of rainbow flowers and branching 

moss, 
Commit the colors of that varying cheek, 
That snowy breast, those dark and droop- 
ing eyes. 

The dim and horned moon hung low, 
and poured 

A sea of lustre on the horizon's verge 

That overflowed its mountains. Yellow 
mist 

Filled the unbounded atmosphere, and 
drank 

Wan moonlight even to fulness: not a 
star 

Shone, not a sound was heard; the very 
winds, 

Danger's grim playmates, on that preci- 
pice 



Slept, clasped in his embrace. — O, storm 

of death ! 
Whose sightless speed divides this sullen 

night : 
And thou, colossal Skeleton, that, still 
Guiding its irresistible career 
In thy devastating omnipotence, 
Art king of this frail world ! from the red 

field 
Of slaughter, from the reeking hospital, 
The patriot's sacred couch, the snowy 

bed 
Of innocence, the scaffold and the throne, 
A mighty voice invokes thee. Ruin calls 
His brother Death. A rare and regal 

prey 
He hath prepared, prowling around the 

world; 
Glutted with which thou mayst repose, 

and men 
Go to their graves like flowers or creep- 
ing worms, 
Nor ever more offer at thy dark shrine 
The unheeded tribute of a broken heart. 

When on the threshold of the green 

recess 
The wanderer's footsteps fell, he knew 

that death 
Was on him. Yet a little, ere it fled. 
Did he resign his high and holy soul 
To images of the majestic past. 
That paused within his passive being now, 
Like winds that bear sweet music, when 

they breathe 
Through some dim latticed chamber. He 

did place 
His pale lean hand upon the rugged trunk 
Of the old pine. Upon an ivied stone 
Reclined his languid head, his limbs did 

rest. 
Diffused and motionless, on the smooth 

brink 
Of that obscurest chasm ; — and thus he 

lay, 
Surrendering to their final impulses 
The hovering powers of life. Hope and 

Despair, 
The torturers, slept; no mortal pain or 

fear 
Marred his repose, the influxes of sense, 
And his own being, unalloyed by pain. 
Yet feebler and more feeble, calmly fed 



THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE. 



115 



The stream of thought, till he lay 

breathing there 
At peace, and faintly smiling. His last 

sight 
Was the great moon, which o'er the 

western line 
Of the wide world her mighty horn sus- 
pended, 
With whose dun beams inwoven dark- 
ness seemed 
To mingle. Now upon the jagged hills 
It rests, and still as the divided frame 
Of the vast meteor sunk, the Poet's 

blood. 
That ever beat in mystic sympathy 
With nature's ebb and flow, grew feebler 

still: 
And when two lessening points of light 

alone 
Gleamed through the darkness, the 

alternate gasp 
Of his faint respiration scarce did stir 
The stagnate night : — till the minutest 

ray 
Was quenched, the pulse yet lingered 

in his heart. 
It paused — it fluttered. But when 

heaven remained 
Utterly blacj<, the murky shades involved 
An image, silent, cold, and motionless. 
As their own voiceless earth and vacant 

air. 
Even as a vapor fed with golden beams 
That ministered on sunlight, ere the west 
Eclipses it, was now that wondrous 

frame — 
No sense, no motion, no divinity — 
A fragile lute, on whose harmonious 

strings 
The breath of heaven did wander — a 

bright stream 
Once fed with many-voiced waves — a 

dream 
Of youth, which night and time have 

quenched forever, 
Still, dark, and dry, and unremembered 

now. 

O, for Medea's wondrous alchemy. 
Which wheresoe'er it fell made the earth 

gleam 
With bright flowers, and the wintry 
boughs exhale 



From vernal blooms fresh fragrance ! O, 

that God, 
Profuse of poisons, would concede the 

chalice 
Which but one living man has drained, 

who now. 
Vessel of deathless wrath, a slave that 

feels 
No proud exemption in the blighting 

curse 
He bears, over the world wanders for- 
ever. 
Lone as incarnate death ! O, that the 

dream 
Of dark magician in his visioned cave, 
Raking the cinders of a crucible 
For life and power, even when his feeble 

hand 
Shakes in its last decay, were the true law 
Of this so lovely world ! But thou art 

fled 
Like some frail exhalation, which the 

dawn 
Robes in its golden beams, — ah ! thou 

hast fled ! 
The brave, the gentle, and the beautiful. 
The child of grace and genius. Heart- 
less things 
Are done and said i' the world, and 

many worms 
And beasts and men live on, and mighty 

Earth 
From sea and mountain, city and wilder- 
ness. 
In vesper low or joyous orison. 
Lifts still its solemn voice: — but thou 

art fled — 
Thou canst no longer know or love the 

shapes 
Of this phantasmal scene, who have to 

thee 
Been purest ministers, who are, alas ! 
Now thou art not. Upon those pallid 

lips 
So sweet even in their silence, on those 

eyes 
That image sleep in death, upon that 

form 
Yet safe from the worm's outrage, let no 

tear 
Be shed — not even in thought. Nor 

when those hues 
Are gone, and those divinest lineaments, 



ii6 NOTE ON ALASTOR ; OR THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE. 



Worn by the senseless wind, shall live 

alone 
In the frail pauses of this simple strain, 
Let not high verse, mourning the 

memory 
Of that which is no more, or painting's 

wo 
Or sculpture, speak in feeble imagery 
Their own cold powers. Art and elo- 
quence, 
And all the shows o' the world are frail 

and vain 
To weep a loss that turns their lights to 

shade. 
It is a wo too "deep for tears," when 

all 
Is reft at once, when some surpassing 

Spirit, 
Whose light adorned the world around 

it, leaves 
Those who remain behind, not sobs or 

groans. 
The passionate tumult of a clinging 

hope; 
But pale despair and cold tranquillity, 
Nature's vast frame, the web of human 

things. 
Birth and the grave, that are not as they 

were. 



NOTE ON ALASTOR BY MRS. 
SHELLEY. 

** Alastor ' ' is written in a very different 
tone from " Queen Mab." In the latter, 
Shelley poured out all the cherished spec- 
ulations of his youth — all the irrepres- 
sible emotions of sympathy, censure, and 
hope, to which the present suffering, 
and what he considers the proper des- 
tiny, of his fellow-creatures, gave birth. 
"Alastor," on the contrary, contains an 
individual interest only. A very few 
years, with their attendant events, had 
checked the ardor of Shelley's hopes, 
though he still thought them well 
grounded, and that to advance their ful- 
filment was the noblest task man could 
achieve. 

This is neither the time nor place to 
speak of the misfortunes that checkered 



his life. It will be sufficient to say that, 
in all he did, he at the time of doing it 
believed himself justified to his own con- 
science; while the various ills of poverty 
and loss of friends brought home to him 
the sad realities of life. Physical suffer- 
ing had also considerable influence in 
causing him to turn his eyes inward; in- 
clining him rather to brood over the 
thoughts and emotions of his own soul 
than to glance abroad, and to make, as in 
' ' Queen Mab, ' ' the whole universe the ob- 
ject and subject of his song. In the spring 
of 1815 an eminent physician pronounced 
that he was dying rapidly of a consump- 
tion; abscesses were formed on his lungs, 
and he suffered acute spasms. Sud- 
denly a complete change took place; 
and, though through life he was a martyr 
to pain and debility, every symptom of 
pulmonary disease vanished. His nerves, 
which nature had formed sensitive to an 
unexampled degree, were rendered still 
more susceptible by the state of his 
health. 

As soon as the peace of 1814 had 
opened the Continent, he went abroad. ' 
He visited some of the more magnificent ' 
scenes of Switzerland, and returned to 
England from Lucerne, by the Reuss and 
the Rhine. The river-navigation en- 
chanted him. In his favorite poem of 
' ' Thalaba, ' ' his imagination had been ex- 
cited by a description of such a voyage. 
In the summer of 18 1 5, after a tour 
along the southern coast of Devonshire 
and a visit to Clifton, he rented a house 
on Bishopgate Heath, on the borders of 
Windsor Forest, where he enjoyed sev- 
eral months of comparative health and 
tranquil happiness. The later summer 
months were warm and dry. Accompa- 
nied by a few friends, he visited the 
source of the Thames, making a voyage 
in a wherry from Windsor to Cricklade. 
His beautiful stanzas in the churchyard 
of Lechlade were written on that occa- 
sion. ' ' Alastor ' ' was composed on his re- 
turn. He spent his days under the oak- 
shades of Windsor Great Park; and the 
magnificent woodland was a fitting study 
to inspire the various descriptions of 
forest-scenery we find in the poem. 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



117 



None of Shelley's poems is more char- 
acteristic than this. The solemn spirit 
that reigns throughout, the worship of 
the majesty of nature, the broodings of a 
poet's heart in solitude — the mingling of 
'the exulting joy which the various aspects 
of the visible universe inspire, with the 
sad and struggling pangs which human 
passion imparts, give a touching inter- 
est to the whole. The death which he 
had often contenfplated during the last 
months as certain and near he here repre- 
sented in such colors as had, in his lonely 
musings, soothed his soul to peace. The 
versification sustains the solemn spirit 
which breathes throughout : it is pecul- 
iarly melodious. The poem ought rather 
to be considered didactic than narrative : 
it was the outpouring of his own emo- 
tions, embodied in the purest form he 
could conceive, painted in the ideal hues 
which his brilliant imagination inspired, 
and softened by the recent anticipation 
of death. 



[ THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 

A POEM IN TWELVE CANTOS. 

Offflfj ht /?pordv zQvoi; ayXaiai^ airroixeada 

Uipaivei Trpof ecryarov 
UXdoV vaval ^' ovn Tri^bi 'W" "»' f"'poti 
'Ej vnipPopeuiv dycDva davnuTciv h^ov. 

nivS. Uv9. X. 

PREFACE. 

The poem which I now present to the 
world is an attempt from which I scarcely 
dare to expect success, and in which a 
writer of established fame might fail 
without disgrace. It is an experiment 
on the temper of the public mind, as to 
how far a thirst for a happier condition 
of moral and political society survives, 
among the enlightened and refined, the 
tempests which have shaken the age in 
which we live. I have sought to enlist 
the harmony of metrical language, the 
ethereal combinations of the fancy, the 
rapid and subtle transitions of human 
passion, all those elements which essen- 



tially compose a Poem, in the cause of a 
liberal and comprehensive morality; and 
in the view of kindling within the 
bosoms of my readers a virtuous enthusi- 
asm for those doctrines of liberty and 
justice, that faith and hope in something 
good, which neither violence nor misrep- 
resentation nor prejudice can ever totally 
extinguish among mankind. 

For this purpose I have chosen a story 
of human passion in its most universal 
character, diversified with moving and 
romantic adventures, and appealing, in 
contempt of all artificial opinions or in- 
stitutions, to the common sympathies of 
every human breast. I have made no 
attempt to recommend the motives which 
I would substitute for those at present 
governing mankind, by methodical and 
systematic argument. I would only 
awaken the feelings, so that the reader 
should see the beauty of true virtue, and 
be incited to those inquiries which have 
led to my moral and political creed, and 
that of some of the sublimest intellects in 
the world. The Poem therefore (with 
the exception of the first canto, which is 
purely introductory) is narrative, not 
didactic. It is a succession of pictures 
illustrating the growth and progress of 
individual mind aspiring after excellence, 
and devoted to the love of mankind; its 
influence in refining and making pure the 
most daring and uncommon impulses of 
the imagination, the understanding, and 
the senses; its impatience at " all the 
oppressions that are done under the 
sun; " its tendency to awaken public 
hope, and to enlighten and improve man- 
kind; the rapid effects of the application 
of that tendency; the awakening of an 
immense nation from their slavery and 
degradation to a true sense of moral dig- 
nity and freedom; the bloodless de- 
thronement of their oppressors, and the 
unveiling of the religious frauds by which 
they had been deluded into submission; 
the tranquillity of successful patriotism, 
and the universal toleration and benevo- 
lence of true philanthropy; the treachery 
and barbarity of hired soldiers; vice not 
the object of punishment and hatred, but 
kindness and pity; the faithlessness of 



ii8 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



tyrants; the confederacy of the Rulers 
of the World, and the restoration of the 
expelled Dynasty by foreign arms; the 
massacre and extermination of the patri- 
ots, and the victory of established power; 
the consequences of legitimate despotism, 
— civil war, famine, plague, superstition, 
and an utter extinction of the domestic 
affections; the judicial murder of the ad- 
vocates of Liberty; the temporary tri- 
umph of oppression, that secure earnest 
of its final and inevitable fall; the tran- 
sient nature of ignorance and error, and 
the eternity of genius and virtue. Such 
is the series of delineations of which the 
Poem consists. And, if the lofty pas- 
sions with which it has been my scope to 
distinguish this story shall not excite in 
the reader a generous impulse, an ardent 
thirst for excellence, an interest profound 
and strong such as belongs to no meaner 
desires, let not the failure be imputed to 
a natural unfitness for human sympathy 
in these sublime and animating themes. 
It is the business of the Poet to commu- 
nicate to others the pleasure and the en- 
thusiasm arising out of those images and 
feelings in the vivid presence of which 
within his own mind consists at once his 
inspiration and his reward. 

The panic which, like an epidemic 
transport, seized upon all classes of men 
during the excesses consequent upon the 
French Revolution, is gradually giving 
place to sanity. It has ceased to be 
believed that whole generations of man- 
kind ought to consign themselves to a 
hopeless inheritance of ignorance and 
misery, because a nation of men who 
had been dupes and slaves for centuries 
were incapable of conducting themselves 
with the wisdom and tranquillity of free- 
men so soon as some of their fetters 
were partially loosened. That their con- 
duct could not have been marked by 
any other characters than ferocity and 
thoughtlessness is the historical fact from 
which liberty derives all its recommenda- 
tions, and falsehood the worst features of 
its deformity. There is a reflux in the 
tide of human things which bears the 
shipwrecked hopes of men into a secure 
haven after the storms are past. Me- 



thinks, those who now live have survived 
an age of despair. 

The French Revolution may be con- 
sidered as one of those manifestations of 
a general state of feeling among civilized 
mankind produced by a defect of corre- 
spondence between the knowledge exist- 
ing in society and the improvement or 
gradual abolition of political institutions. 
The year 1788 may be assumed as the 
epoch of one of the" most important 
crises produced by this feeling. The 
sympathies connected with that event 
extended to every bosom. The most 
generous and amiable natures were those 
which participated the most extensively 
in these sympathies. But such a degree 
of unmingled good was expected as it 
was impossible to realize. If the Revo- 
lution had been in every respect prosper- 
ous, then misrule and superstition would 
lose half their claims to our abhorrence, 
as fetters which the captive can unlock 
with the slightest motion of his fingers, 
and which do not eat with poisonous rust 
into the soul. The revulsion occasioned 
by the atrocities of the demagogues, and 
the re-establishment of successive tyran- 
nies in France, was terrible, and felt in 
the remotest corner of the civilized world. 
Could they listen to the plea of reason 
who had groaned under the calamities of 
a social state according to the provisions 
of which one man riots in luxury whilst 
another famishes for want of bread? Can 
he who the day before was a trampled 
slave suddenly become liberal-minded, 
forbearing, and independent? This is 
the consequence of the habits of a state 
of society to be produced by resolute 
perseverance and indefatigable hope, and 
long-suffering and long-believing courage, 
and the systematic efforts of generations 
of men of intellect and virtue. Such is 
the lesson which experience teaches now. 
But, on the first reverses of hope in the 
progress of French liberty, the sanguine 
eagerness for good overleaped the solution 
of these questions, and for a time ex- 
tinguished itself in the unexpectedness of 
their result. Thus, many of the most 
ardent and tender-hearted of the worship- 
pers of public good have been morally 



i 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



Iin 



ruined by what a partial glimpse of the 
events they deplored appeared to show- 
as the melancholy desolation of all their 
cherished hopes. Hence gloom and mis- 
anthropy have become the characteristics 
of the age in which we live, the solace 
of a disappointment that unconsciously 
finds relief only in the wilful exaggera- 
tion of its own despair. This influence 
has tainted the literature of the age with 
the hopelessness of the minds from 
which it flows. Metaphysics, ^ and in- 
quiries into moral and political science, 
have become little else than vain attempts 
to revive exploded superstitions, or soph- 
isms like those 2 of Mr. Malthus, calcu- 
lated to lull the oppressors of mankind 
into a security of everlasting triumph. 
Our works of fiction and poetry have 
been overshadowed by the same infec- 
tious gloom. But mankind appear to me 
to be emerging from their trance. I am 
aware, methinks, of a slow, gradual, si- 
lent change. In that belief I have com- 
posed the following poem. 

I do not presume to enter into compe- 
tition with our greatest contemporary 
Poets. Yet I am unwilling to tread in the 
footsteps of any who have preceded me. 
I have sought to avoid the imitation of 
any style of language or versification 
peculiar to the original minds of which it 
is the character ; designing that, even if 
what I have produced be worthless, it 
should still be properly my own. Nor 
have I permitted any system relating to 
mere words to divert the attention of the 
reader, from whatever interest I may have 
succeeded in creating, to my own in- 
genuity in contriving to disgust him ac- 
cording to the rules of criticism. I have 
simply clothed my thoughts in what ap- 



1 I ought to except Sir W, Drummond's Aca- 
demical Questions ; a volume of very acute and 
powerful metaphysical criticism. 

2 It is remarkable, as a symptom of the revival 
of public hope, that Mr. Malthus has assigned, 
in the later editions of his work, an indefinite 
dominion to moral restraint over the principle of 
population. This concession answers all the in- 
ferences from his doctrine unfavorable to human 
improvement, and reduces the Essay on Popula- 
tion to a commentary illustrative of the unanswer- 
ableaess of Political Justice. 



peared to me the most obvious and ap- 
propriate language. A person familial 
with nature, and with the most celebrattd 
productions of the human mind, can 
scarcely err in following the instinct, with 
respect to selection of language, pro- 
duced by that familiarity. 

There is an education peculiarly fitted 
for a Poet, without which genius and 
sensibility can hardly fill the circle of 
their capacities. No education, indeed, 
can entitle to this appellation a dull and 
unobservant mind, or one, though neither 
dull nor unobservant, in which the chan- 
nels of communication between thought 
and expression have been obstructed or 
closed. How far it is my fortune to be- 
long to either of the latter classes I can- 
not know. I aspire to be something 
better. The circumstances of my acci- 
dental education have been favorable to 
this ambition. I have been familiar from 
boyhood with mountains and lakes and 
the sea, and the solitude of forests: Dan- 
ger, which sports upon the brink of preci- 
pices, has been my playmate. I have 
trodden the glaciers of the Alps, and 
lived under the eye of Mont Blanc. I 
have been a wanderer among distant 
fields. I have sailed down mighty rivers, 
and seen thj suii rise and set, and the 
stars come forth, whilst I have sailed 
night and day down a rapid stream among 
mountains. I have seen populous cities, 
and have watched the passions which 
rise and spread, and sink and change, 
amongst assembled multitudes of men. 
I have seen the theatre of the more visi- 
ble ravages of tyranny and war ; cities 
and villages reduced to scattered groups 
of black and roofless houses, and the 
naked inhabitants sitting famished upon 
their desolated thresholds. I have con- 
versed with living men of genius. The 
poetry of ancient Greece and Rome, and 
modern Italy, and our own country, has 
been to me, like external nature, a 
passion and an enjoyment. Such are 
the sources from which the materials for 
the imagery of my Poem have been drawn. 
I have considered Poetry in its most 
comprehensive sense ; and have read the 
poets and the historians and the meta- 



120 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



physicians ^ whose writings have been 
accessible to me, and have looked upon 
the beautiful and majestic scenery of the 
earth, as common sources of those ele- 
ments which it is the province of the 
Poet to embody and combine. Yet the 
experience and the feelings to which I re- 
fer do not in themselves constitute men 
Poets, but only prepare them to be the 
auditors of those who are. How far I 
shall be found to possess that more essen- 
tial attribute of Poetry, the power of 
awakening in others sensations like those 
which animate my own bosom, is that 
which, to speak sincerely, I know not; 
and which, with an acquiescent and con- 
tented spirit, I expect to be taught by the 
effect which I shall produce upon those 
whom I now address. 

I have avoided, as I have said before, 
the imitation of any contemporary style. 
But there must be a resemblance, which 
does not depend upon their own will, be- 
tween all the writers of any particular 
age. They cannot escape from subjection 
to a common influence which arises out of 
an infinite combination of circumstances 
belonging to the times in which they 
live; though each is in a degree the 
author of the very influence by which his 
being is thus pervaded. Thus, the tragic 
poets of the age of Pericles ; the Italian 
revivers of ancient learning ; those mighty 
intellects of our own country that suc- 
ceeded the Reformation, the translators 
of the Bible, Shakspeare, Spenser, the 
dramatists of the reign of Elizabeth, and 
Lord Bacon ; '^ the colder spirits of the 
interval that succeeded; — all resemble 
each other, and differ from every other 
in their several classes. In this view of 
things. Ford can no more be called the 
imitator of Shakspeare than Shakspeare 
the imitator of Ford. There were per- 
haps few other points of resemblance 
between these two men than that which 



* In this sense there may be such a thing as 
perfectibility in works of fiction, notwithstanding 
the concession often made by the advocates of 
human improvement, that perfectibility is a term 
applicable only to science. 

2 Milton stands alone in the age which he 
illumined. 



the universal and inevitable influence of 
their age produced. And this is an in- 
fluence which neither the meanest scrib- 
bler nor the sublimest genius of any era 
can escape ; and which I have not at- 
tempted to escape. 

I have adopted the stanza of Spenser 
(a measure iaexpressibly beautiful), not 
because I consider it a finer model of 
poetical harmony than the blank verse of 
Shakspeare and Milton, but because in 
the latter there is no shelter for medioc- 
rity ; you must either succeed or fail. 
This perhaps an aspiring spirit should 
desire. But I was enticed also by the 
brilliancy and magnificence of sound 
which a mind that has been nourished 
upon musical thoughts can produce by a 
just and harmonious arrangement of the 
pauses of this measure. Yet there will 
be found some instances where I have 
completely failed in this attempt ; and 
one, which I here request the reader to 
consider as an erratum, where there is 
left, most inadvertently, an alexandrine 
in the middle of a stanza. 

But in this as in every other respect I ■ 
have written fearlessly. It is the mis- 
fortune of this age that its writers, too 
thoughtless of immortality, are exquisitely ' 
sensible to temporary praise or blame. 
They write with the fear of Reviews be- 
fore their eyes. This system of criticism 
sprang up in that torpid interval when 
poetry was not. Poetry, and the art 
which professes to regulate and limit its 
powers, cannot subsist together. Lon- 
ginus could not have been the contem- 
porary of Homer, nor Boileauof Horace. 
Yet this species of criticism never pre- 
sumed to assert an understanding of its 
own: it has always, unlike true science, 
followed, not preceded, the opinion of 
mankind, and would even now bribe ' 
with worthless adulation some of our 
greatest Poets to impose gratuitous fetters 
on their own imaginations, and become 
unconscious accomplices in the daily mur- 
der of all genius either not so aspiring or 
not so fortunate as their own. I have 
sought therefore to write, as I believe 
that Homer, Shakspeare, and Milton, 
wrote, in utter disregard of anonymous 



THE REVOLT OE ISLAM. 



121 



censure. I am certain that calumny and 
misrepresentation, though it may move 
me to compassion cannot disturb my 
peace. I shall understand the expressive 
silence of those sagacious enemies who 
dare not trust themselves to speak. I 
shall endeavor to extract, from the midst 
of insult and contempt and maledictions, 
those admonitions which may tend to 
correct whatever imperfections such cen- 
surers may discover in this my first serious 
appeal to the public. If certain critics 
were as clear-sighted as they are ma- 
lignant, how great would be the benefit 
derived from their virulent writings ! As 
it is, I fear I shall be malicious enough to 
be amused with their paltry tricks and 
lame invectives. Should the public judge 
that my composition is worthless, I shall 
indeed bow before the tribunal from 
which Milton received his crown of im- 
niortality ; and shall seek to gather, if I 
live, strength from that defeat, which 
may nerve me to some new enterprise of 
thought which may not be worthless. I 
cannot conceive that Lucretius, when he 
meditated that poem whose doctrines are 
yet the basis of our metaphysical knowl- 
edge, and whose eloquence has been the 
wonder of mankind, wrote in awe of 
such censure as the hired sophists of the 
impure and superstitious noblemen of 
Rome might affix to what he should pro- 
duce. It was at the period when Greece 
was led captive, and Asia made tributary 
to the Republic, fast verging itself to 
slavery and ruin, that a multitude of 
Syrian captives, bigoted to the worship 
of their obscene Ashtaroth, and the un- 
worthy successors of Socrates and Zeno, 
found there a precarious subsistence by 
administering, under the name of freed- 
men, to the vices and vanities of the 
great. These wretched men were skilled 
to plead, with a superficial but plausible 
set of sophisms, in favor of that contempt 
for virtue which is the portion of slaves, 
and that faith in portents, the most fatal 
substitute for benevolence in the imagi- 
nations of men, which, arising from the 
enslaved communities of the East, then 



first began to overwhelm the western na- 
tions in its stream. Were these the kind 
of men whose disapprobation the wise 
and lofty-minded Lucretius should have 
regarded with a salutary awe? The latest 
and perhaps the meanest of those who 
follow in his footsteps would disdain to 
hold life on such conditions. 

The Poem now presented to the public 
occupied little more than six months in 
the composition. That period has been 
devoted to the task with unremitting 
ardor and enthusiasm. I have exercised 
a watchful and earnest criticism on my 
work as it grew under my hands. I 
would willingly have sent it forth to the 
world with that perfection which long 
labor and revision is said to bestow. But 
I found that, if I should gain something 
in exactness by this method, I might lose 
much of the newness and energy of im- 
agery and language as it flowed fresh 
from my mind. And, although the mere 
composition occupied no more than six 
months, the thoughts thus arranged were 
slowly gathered in as many years. 

I trust that the reader will carefully 
distinguish between those opinions which 
have a dramatic propriety in reference to 
the characters which they are designed 
to elucidate, and such as are properly my 
own. The erroneous and degrading idea 
which men have conceived of a Supreme 
Being, for instance, is spoken against, 
but not the Supreme Being itself. The 
belief which some superstitious persons 
whom I have brought upon the stage en- 
tertain of the Deity, as injurious to the 
character of his benevolence, is widely 
different from my own. In recommend- 
ing also a great and important change in 
the spirit which animates the social in- 
stitutions of mankind, I have avoided all 
flattery to those violent and malignant 
passions of our nature which are ever on 
the watch to mingle with and to alloy the 
most beneficial innovations. There is no 
quarter given to Revenge, or Envy, or 
Prejudice. Love is celebrated everywhere 
as the sole law which should govern the 
moral world. 



122 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



DEDICATION. 

There is no danger to a man that knows 
What life and death is: there's not any 

law 
Exceeds his knowledge : neither is it lawful 
That he should stoop to any other' law. 

Chapman. 



TO MARY. 

I. 

So now my summer task is ended, 
Mary, 
And I return to thee, mine own 
heart's home; 
As to his Queen some victor Knight of 
Faery, 
Earning bright spoils for her en- 
chanted dome; 
Nor thou disdain that, ere my fame 
become 
A star among the stars of mortal night, 
If it indeed may cleave its natal 
gloom, 
Its doubtful promise thus I would 
unite 
With thy beloved name, thou Child of 
love and light. 



II. 



The toil which stole from thee so many 
an hour 
Is ended — and the fruit is at thy 
feet! 
No longer where the woods to frame 
a bower 
With interlaced branches mix and 

meet, 
Or where, with sound like many 
voices sweet, 
Waterfalls leap among wild islands 
green 
Which framed for my lone boat a 
lone retreat 
Of moss-grown trees and weeds, shall 
I be seen : 
But beside thee, where still my heart 
has ever been. 



III. 

Thoughts of great deeds were mine, 
dear Friend, when first 
The clouds which wrap this world 
from youth did pass. 
I do remember well the hour which 
burst 
My spirit's sleep : a fresh May-dawn 

it was. 
When I walked forth upon the glit- 
tering grass. 
And wept, I knew not why : until 
there rose 
From the near schoolroom voices 
that, alas ! 
Were but one echo from a world of 
woes — 
The harsh and grating strife of tyrants 
and of foes. 



IV. 



And then I clasped my hands, and 
looked around, 
But none was near to mock my 
streaming eyes. 
Which poured their warm drops on the 
sunny ground — 
So, without shame, I spake: — "I 

will be wise. 
And just, and free, and mild, if in 
me lies 
Such power, for I grow weary to be- 
hold 
The selfish and the strong still 
tyrannize 
Without reproach or check." I then 
controlled 
My tears, my heart grew calm, and I 
was meek and bold. 



V. 



And from that hour did I with earnest 
thought 
Heap knowledge from forbidden 
mines of lore, 
Yet nothing that my tyrants knew or 
taught 
I cared to learn, but from that secret 
store 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



123 



Wrought linked armor for my soul, 
before 
It might walk forth to war among 
mankind; 
Thus power and hope were strength- 
ened more and more 
Within me, till there came upon my 
mind 
A sense of loneliness, a thirst with which 
I pined. 



VI. 



Alas that love should be a blight and 
snare 
To those who seek all sympathies in 
one ! — 
Such once I sought in vain; then black 
despair. 
The shadow of a starless night, was 

thrown 
Over the world in which I moved 
alone : — 
Yet never found I one not false to me. 
Hard hearts, and cold, like weights 
of icy stone 
Which crushed and withered mine, 
that could not be 
Aught but a lifeless clog, until revived 
by thee. 



VII. 

Thou Friend, whose presence on my 
wintry heart 
Fell, like bright Spring upon some 
herbless plain, 
How beautiful and calm and free thou 
wert 
In thy young wisdom, when the 

mortal chain 
Of Custom thou didst burst and 
rend in twain, 
And walk as free as light the clouds 
among. 
Which many an envious slave then 
breathed in vain 
From his dim dungeon, and my spirit 
sprung 
To meet thee from the woes which had 
begirt it long ! 



VIII. 

No more alone through the world's 
wilderness, 
Although I trod the paths of high 
intent, 
I journeyed now : no more companion- 
less. 
Where solitude is like despair, I 

went. — 
There is the wisdom of a stern con- 
tent 
When Poverty can blight the just and 
good. 
When Infamy dares mock the inno- 
cent. 
And cherished friends turn with the 
multitude 
To trample : this was ours, and we un- 
shaken stood ! 



IX. 



Now has descended a serener hour. 
And, with inconstant fortune, friends 
return; 
Though suffering leaves the knowledge 
and the power 
Which says, " Let scorn be not re- 
paid with scorn." 
And from thy side two gentle babes 
are born 
To fill our home with smiles, and thus 
are we 
Most fortunate beneath life's beam- 
ing morn : 
And these delights, and thou, have 
been to me 
The parents of the Song I consecrate 
to thee. 



Is it that now my inexperienced fin- 
gers 

But strike the prelude of a loftier 
strain ? 
Or must the lyre on which my spirit 
lingers 

Soon pause in silence, ne'er to sound 
again. 

Though it might shake the Anarch 
Custom's reign. 



124 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



And charm the minds of men to Truth's 


And the tumultuous world stood mule 


own sway, 


to hear it. 


Holier than was Amphion's? I 


As some lone man who in a desert 


would fain 


hears 


Reply in hope — but I am worn away, 


The music of his home : — unwonted 


And Death and Love are yet contending 


fears 


for their prey. 


Fell on the pale oppressors of our race. 




And Faith and Custom and low- 


XI. 


thoughted cares. 




Like thunder-stricken dragons, for a 


And what art thou? I know, but dare 


space 


not speak : 


Left the torn human heart, their food 


Time may interpret to his silent 


and dwelling-place. 


years. 




Yet in the paleness of thy thoughtful 


XIV. 


cheek, 




And in the light thine ample fore- 


Truth's deathless voice pauses among 


head wears. 


mankind ! 


And in thy sweetest smiles, and in 


If there must be no response to my 


thy tears, 


cry — 


And in thy gentle speech, a prophecy 


If men must rise and stamp, with fury 


Is whispered, to subdue my fondest 


blind. 


fears : 


On his pure name who loves them. 


And, through thine eyes, even in thy 


— thou and I, 


soul I see 


Sweet friend ! can look from our 


A lamp of vestal fire burning internally. 


tranquillity 




Like lamps into the world's tempestu- 


XII. 


ous night, — 




Two tranquil stars, while clouds are 


They say that thou wert lovely from 


passing by 


thy birth, 


Which wrap them from the foundering 


Of glorious parents, thou aspiring 


seaman's sight, 


Child. 


That burn from year to year with unex- 


I wonder not — for One then left this 


tinguished light. 


earth 




Whose life was like a setting planet 




mild, 


CANTO I. 


Which clothed thee in the radiance 




undefiled 


I. 


Of its departing glory; still her fame 




Shines on thee, through the tempests 


When the last hope of trampled France 


dark and wild 


had failed 


Which shake these latter days; and 


Like a brief dream of unremaining 


thou canst claim 


glory. 


The shelter, from thy Sire, of an immor- 


From visions of despair I rose, and 


tal name. 


scaled 




The peak of an aerial promontory, 


XIII. 


Whose caverned base with the vext 




surge was hoary; 


One voice cam.e forth from many a 


And saw the golden dawn break forth, 


mighty spirit 


and waken 


Which was the echo of three-thou- 


Each cloud and every wave : — but 


sand years; 


transitory 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



125 



The calm: for sudden the firm earth 
was shaken, 
As if by the last wreck its frame were 
overtaken. 

II. 

So as I stood, one blast of muttering 
thunder 
Burst in far peals along the wave- 
less deep, 
When, gathering fast, around, above, 
and under, 
Long trains of tremulous mist began 

to creep. 
Until their complicating lines did 
steep 
The orient sun in shadow : — not a 
sound 
Was heard; one horrible repose did 
keep 
The forests and the floods, and all 
around 
Darkness more dread than night was 
poured upon the ground. 

III. 

Hark ! 't is the rushing of a wind that 
sweeps 
Earth and the ocean. See ! the 
lightnings yawn 
Deluging Heaven with fire, and the 
lashed deeps 
Glitter and boil beneath; it rages 

on. 
One mighty stream, whirlwind and 
waves upthrown, * 
Lightning and hail, and darkness ed- 
dying by. 
There is a pause — the sea-birds, 
that were gone 
Into their caves to shriek, come forth, 
to spy 
What calm has fallen on earth, what 
light is in the sky. 

IV. 

For, where the irresistible storm had 
cloven 
That fearful darkness, the blue sky 
was seen 



Fretted with many a fair cloud inter- 
woven 
Most delicately, and the ocean 

green. 
Beneath that opening spot of blue 
serene, 
Quivered like burning emerald : calm 
was spread 
On all below; but far on high, 
between 
Earth and the upper air, the vast clouds 
fled, 
Countless and swift as leaves on au- 
tumn's tempest shed. 

V. 

For ever, as the war became more fierce 

Between the whirlwinds and the 

rack on high. 

That spot grew more serene; blue 

light did pierce 

The woof of those white clouds, 

which seemed to lie 
Far, deep, and motionless; while 
through the sky 
The pallid semicircle of the moon 
Passed on, in slow and moving 
majesty; 
Its upper horn arrayed in mists, which 
soon 
But slowly fled, like dew beneath the 
beams of noon. 

VI. 

I could not choose but gaze; a fascina- 
tion 
Dwelt in that moon and sky and 
clouds, which drew 
My fancy thither, and in expectation 
Of what, I knew not, I remained: 

the hue 
Of the white moon, amid that heaven 
so blue. 
Suddenly stained with shadow did 
appear; 
A speck, a cloud, a shape, approach' 
ing grew. 
Like a great ship in the sun's sink- 
ing sphere 
Beheld afar at sea, and swift it came 
anear. 



126 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



VII. 

Even like a bark, which from a chasm 
of mountains, 
Dark, vast, and overhanging, on a 
river 
"Which there collects the strength of 
all its fountains, 
Comes forth, whilst with the speed 

its frame doth quiver. 
Sails, oars, and stream, tending to 
one endeavor; 
So, from that chasm of light a winged 
Form, 
On all the winds of heaven approach- 
ing ever. 
Floated, dilating as it came : the storm 
Pursued it with fierce blasts, and light- 
nings swift and warm. 

VIII. 

A course precipitous, of dizzy speed. 
Suspending thought and breath; a 
monstrous sight ! 
For in the air do I behold indeed 
An Eagle and a Serpent wreathed 

in fight : — 
And now, relaxing its impetuous 
flight 
Before the aerial rock on which I 
stood. 
The Eagle, hovering, wheeled to 
left and right. 
And hung with lingering wings over 
the flood, 
And startled with its yells the wide air's 
solitude. 

IX. 

A shaft of light upon its wings de- 
scended, 
And every golden feather gleamed 
therein — 
Feather and scale inextricably blended. 
The Serpent's mailed and many- 
colored skin 
Shone through the plumes its coils 
were twined within 
By many a swoln and knotted fold, 
and high 
And far the neck, receding lithe and 
thin, 



Sustained a crested head, which warily 
Shifted and glanced before the Eagle's 
steadfast eye. 

X. 

Around, around, in ceaseless circles 
wheeling 
With clang of wings and scream, 
the Eagle sailed 
Incessantly — sometimes on high con- 
cealing 
Its lessening orbs, sometimes, as if 

it failed. 
Drooped through the air; and still 
it shrieked and wailed. 
And, casting back its eager head, with 
beak 
And talon unremittingly assailed 
The wreathed Serpent, who did ever 
seek 
Upon his enemy's heart a mortal wound 
to wreak. 

XI. 

What life, what power, was kindled 
and arose 
Within the sphere of that appalling 
fray ! 
For, from the encounter of those won- 
drous foes, 
A vapor like the sea's suspended 

spray 
Hung gathered : in the void air, far 
away. 
Floated the shattered plumes: bright 
scales did leap, 
Where'er the Eagle's talons made 
their way. 
Like sparks into the darkness; — as 
they sweep. 
Blood stains the snowy foam of the 
tumultuous deep. 

XII. 

Swift chances in that combat — many 
a check. 
And many a change, a dark and wild 
turmoil ; 

Sometimes the Snake around his ene- 
my's neck 



THE REVOLT OE ISLAM. 



127 



Locked in stiff rings his adamantine 

coil, 
Until the Eagle, faint with pain and 
toil, 
Remitted his str6ng flight, and near 
the sea 
Languidly fluttered, hopeless so to 
foil 
His adversary, who then reared on 
high 
His red and burning crest, radiant with 
victory. 

XIII. 

Then on the white edge of the burst- 
ing surge, 
Where they had sunk together, 
would the Snake 
Relax his suffocating grasp, and 
scourge 
The wind with his wild writhings; 

for, to break 
That chain of torment, the vast bird 
would shake 
The strength of his unconquerable 
wings 
As in despair, and with his sinewy 
neck 
Dissolve in sudden shock those linked 
rings, — 
Then soar as swift as smoke from a 
volcano springs. 

XIV. 

Wile baffled wile, and strength encoun- 
tered strength, 
Thus long, but unprevailing : — the 
event 
Of that portentous fight appeared at 
length: 
Until the lamp of day was almost 

spent 
It had endured, when lifeless, stark, 
and rent. 
Hung high that mighty Serpent, and 
at last 
Fell to the sea, — while o'er the 
continent, 
With clang of wings and screams, the 

Eagle past. 
Heavily borne away on the exhausted 
blast. 



XV, 

And with it fled the tempest, so that 
ocean 
And earth and sky shone through 
the atmosphere — 
Only 't was strange to see the red 
commotion 
Of waves like mountains o'er the 

sinking sphere 
Of sunset sweep, and their fierce 
roar to hear 
Amid the calm : — down the steep path 
I wound 
To the sea-shore — the evening was 
most clear 
And beautiful; and there the sea I 
found 
Calm as a cradled child in dreamless 
slumber bound. 

XVI. 

There was a Woman, beautiful as 
morning. 
Sitting beneath the rocks upon the 
sand 
Of the waste sea — fair as one flower 
adorning 
An icy wilderness — each delicate 

hand 
Lay crossed upon her bosom, and 
the band 
Of her dark hair had fallen, and so 
she sate. 
Looking upon the waves; on the 
bare strand 
Upon the sea-mark a small boat did 
wait. 
Fair as herself, like Love by Hope left 
desolate. 

XVII. 

It seemed that this fair Shape had 
looked upon 
That unimaginable fight, and now 
That her sweet eyes were weary of 
the sun. 
As brightly it illustrated her woe; 
For in the tears, which silently to 
flow 
Paused not, its lustre hung: she, 
watching aye 



128 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



The foam-wreaths which the faint 
tide wove below 
Upon the spangled sands, groaned 
heavily, 
And after every groan looked up over 
the sea. 

XVIII. 

And when she saw the wounded Ser- 
pent make 
His path between the waves, her 
lips grew pale, 
Parted, and quivered : the tears ceased 
to break 
From her immovable eyes; no voice 

of wail 
Escaped her; but she rose, and, 
on the gale 
Loosening her star-bright robe and 
shadowy hair, 
Poured forth her voice; the caverns 
of the vale 
That opened to the ocean caught it 
there. 
And filled with silver sounds the over- 
flowing air. 

XIX, 

She spake in language whose strange 
melody 
Might not belong to earth. I heard 
alone — 
What made its music more melodious 
be — 
The pity and the love of every tone; 
But to the Snake those accents 
sweet were known 
His native tongue and hers : nor did 
he beat 
The hoar spray idly then, but, wind- 
ing on 
Through the green shadows of the 
waves that meet 
Near to the shore, did pause beside her 
snowy feet. 

XX. 

Then on the sands the Woman sate 
again. 
And wept and clasped her hands, 
and, all between, 



Renewed the unintelligible strain 
Of her melodious voice and eloquent 

mien; 
And she unveiled her bosom, and 
the green 
And glancing shadows of the sea did 
play 
O'er its marmoreal depth — one 
moment seen : 
For ere the next the Serpent did obey 
Her voice, and, coiled in rest, in her 
embrace it lay. 

XXI. 

Then she arose, and smiled on me, 
with eyes 
Serene yet sorrowing, like that 
planet fair. 
While yet the daylight lingereth in 
the skies. 
Which cleaves with arrowy beams 

the dark-red air, — 
And said: "To grieve is wise, but 
the despair 
Was weak and vain which led thee 
here from sleep: 
This shalt thou know, and more, 
if thou dost dare, 
With me and with this Serpent, o'er 
the deep, 
A voyage divine and strange, compan- 
ionship to keep." 

XXII. 

Her voice was like the wildest, saddest 
tone. 
Yet sweet, of some loved voice 
heard long ago. 
I wept. "Shall this fair woman all 
alone 
Over the sea with that fierce Ser- 
pent go? 
His head is on her heart, and who 
can know 
How soon he may devour his feeble 
prey? " 
Such were my thoughts, when the 
tide 'gan to flow; 
And that strange boat like the moon's 
shade did sway 
Amid reflected stars that in the watei 
lay — 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



129 



XXIII. 

A boat of rare device, which had no 
sail 
But its own curved prow of thin 
moonstone, 
Wrought like a web of texture fine 
and frail, 
To catch those gentlest winds which 

are not known 
To breathe, but by the steady speed 
alone 
With which it cleaves the sparkling 
sea; and, now 
We are embarked, the mountains 
hang and frown 
Over the starry deep that gleams be- 
low 
A vast and dim expanse, as o'er the 
waves we go. 

XXIV. 

And, as we sailed, a strange and awful 
tale 
That Woman told, like such myste- 
rious dream 
As makes the slumberer's cheek with 
wonder pale ! 
'T was midnight, and around, a 

shoreless stream, 
Wide ocean rolled, when that ma- 
jestic theme 
Shrined in her heart found utterance, 
and she bent 
Her looks on mine; those eyes a 
kindling beam 
Of love divine into my spirit sent, 
And, ere her lips could move, made the 
air eloquent. 

XXV. 

** Speak not to me, but hear ! Much 

shalt thou learn, 
Much must remain unthought, and 
more untold. 
In the dark Future's ever-flowing urn : 
Know then that from the depth of 

ages old 
Two Powers o'er mortal things do- 
minion hold, 
Ruling the world with a divided lot, — 
Immortal, all-pervading, manifold, 



Twin Genii, equal Gods — when life 
and thought 
Sprang forth, they burst the womb of 
inessential Naught. 

XXVI. 

"The earliest dweller of the world, 
alone, 
Stood on the verge of chaos. Lo ! 
afar 
O'er the wide wild abyss two meteors 
shone. 
Sprung from the depth of its tem- 
pestuous jar: 
A blood-red Comet and the Morning 
Star 
Mingling their beams in combat — As 
he stood. 
All thoughts within his mind waged 
mutual war 
In dreadful sympathy — when to the 
flood 
That fair Star fell, he turned and shed 
his brother's blood. 

XXVII. 

"Thus evil triumphed, and the Spirit 
of evil. 
One Power of many shapes which 
none may know. 
One Shape of many names; the Fiend 
did revel 
In victory, reigning o'er a world of 

woe. 
For the new race of man went to 
and fro. 
Famished and homeless, loathed and 
loathing, wild, 
And hating good — for his immortal 
foe 
He changed from starry shape, beau- 
teous and mild. 
To a dire Snake, with man and beast 
unreconciled. 

XXVIII. 

" The darkness lingering o'er the dawn 
of things 
Was Evil's breath and life; this 
made him strong 



I30 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



To soar aloft with overshadowing 
wings : 
And the great Spirit of Good did 

creep among 
The nations of mankind, and every 
tongue 
Curst and blasphemed him as he past; 
for none 
Knew good from evil, though their 
names were hung 
In mockery o'er the fane where many 
a groan 
As King, and Lord, and God the con- 
quering Fiend did own, — 

XXIX. 

*' The Fiend, whose name was Legion; 
Death, Decay, 
Earthquake, and Blight, and Want, 
and Madness pale. 
Winged and wan diseases, an array 
Numerous as leaves that strew the 

autumnal gale; 
Poison, a snake in flowers, beneath 
the veil 
Of food and mirth hiding his mortal 
head ; 
And, without whom all these might 
naught avail. 
Fear, Hatred, Faith, and Tyranny, 
who spread 
Those subtle nets which snare the living 
and the dead. 

XXX. 

** His spirit is their power, and they 
his slaves 
In air, and light, and thought, and 
language, dwell; 
And keep their state from palaces to 
graves. 
In all resorts of men — invisible, 
But when, in ebon mirror, Night- 
mare fell 
To tyrant or impostor bids them rise, 
Black winged demon forms — whom, 
from the hell, 
His reign and dwelling beneath nether 

skies, 
He loosens to their dark and blasting 
ministries. 



XXXI. 

" In the world's youth his empire was 
as firm 
As its foundations. Soon the Spirit 
of Good, 
Though in the likeness of a loathsome 
worm. 
Sprang from the billows of the form- 
less flood. 
Which shrank and fled, — and with 
that Fiend of blood 
Renewed the doubtful war. Thrones 
then first shook. 
And earth's immense and trampled 
multitude 
In hope on their own powers began to 
look. 
And Fear, the demon pale, his sanguine 
shrine forsook. 

XXXII. 

"Then Greece arose, and to its bards 
and sages. 
In dream, the golden-pinioned Genii 
came, 
Even where they slept amid the night 
of ages, 
Steeping their hearts in the divinest 

flame 
Which thy breath kindled. Power of 
holiest name ! 
And oft in cycles since, when darkness 
gave 
New weapons to thy foe, their sun- 
like fame 
Upon the combat shone — a light to 
save. 
Like Paradise spread forth beyond the 
shadowy grave. 

XXXIII. 

"Such is this conflict — when man- 
kind doth strive 
With its oppressors in a strife of 
blood. 
Or when free thoughts, like lightnings, 
are alive. 
And in each bosom of the multitude 
Justice and truth with custom's 
hydra brood 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



131 



Wage silent war; when priests and 
kings dissemble 
In smiles or frowns their fierce dis- 
quietude, 
When round pure hearts a host of 
hopes assemble, 
The Snake and Eagle meet — the world's 
foundjitions tremble ! 

XXXIV. 

"Thou hast beheld that fight — when 
to thy home 
Thou dost return, steep not its hearth 
in tears; 
Though thou may'st hear that earth is 
now become 
The tyrant's garbage, which to his 

compeers. 
The vile reward of their dishonored 
years, 
He will dividing give. — The victor 
Fiend, 
Omnipotent of yore, now quails, and 
fears 
His triumph dearly won, which soon 
will lend 
An impulse swift and sure to his ap- 
proaching end. 

XXXV. 

** List, stranger, list ! mine is a human 
form. 
Like that thou wearest — touch me 
— shrink not now ! 
My hand thou feel'st is not a ghost's, 
but warm 
With human blood. — 'T was many 

years ago 
Since first my thirsting soul aspired 
to know 
The secrets of this wondrous world, 
when deep 
My heart was pierced with sympa- 
thy for woe 
Which could not be mine own — and 
thought did keep, 
In dream, unnatural watch beside an 
infant's sleep. 

XXXVI. 

"Woe could not be mine own, since 
far from men 



I dwelt, a free and happy orphan 
child, 
By the seashore, in a deep mountain- 
glen; 
And near the waves and through the 

forests wild 
I roamed, to storm and darkness 
reconciled : 
For I was calm while tempest shook 
the sky : 
But, when the breathless heavens in 
beauty smiled, 
I wept sweet tears, yet too tumultu- 
ously 
For peace, and clasped my hands aloft 
in ecstasy. 

XXXVII. 

"These were forebodings of my fate — 
Before 
A woman's heart beat in my virgin 
breast. 
It had been nurtured in divinest lore : 
A dying poet gave me books, and 

blest 
With wild but holy talk the sweet 
unrest 
In which I watched him as he died 
away — 
A youth with hoary hair — a fleeting 
guest 
Of our lone mountains: and this lore 
did sway 
My spirit like a storm, contending there 
alway. 

XXXVIII. 

" Thus the dark tale which history doth 
unfold 
I knew, but not, methinks, as others 
know, 
For they weep not; and Wisdom had 
unrolled 
The clouds which hide the gulf of 

mortal woe, — 
To few can she that warning vision 
show — 
For I loved all things with intense 
devotion; 
So that, when Hope's deep source in 
fullest flow, 



132 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



Like earthquake, did uplift the stag- 
nant ocean 
Of human thoughts, mine shook beneath 
the wide emotion. 



XXXIX. 

•' When first the living blood through 
all these veins 
Kindled a thought in sense, great 
France sprang forth, 
And seized, as if to break, the ponder- 
ous chains 
Which bind in woe the nations of 

the earth. 
I saw, and started from my cottage- 
hearth; 
And to the clouds and waves in tame- 
less gladness 
Shrieked, till they caught immeasur- 
able mirth, 
And laughed in light and music; soon 
sweet madness 
Was poured upon my heart, a soft and 
thrilling sadness. 

XL. 

"Deep slumber fell on me; — my 
dreams were fire. 
Soft and delightful thoughts did rest 
and hover 
Like shadows o'er my brain; and 
strange desire. 
The tempest of a passion raging over 
My tranquil soul, its depths with 
light did cover, — 
Which past; and calm and darkness, 
sweeter far. 
Came — then I loved; but not a 
human lover ! 
For, when I rose from sleep, the 
Morning Star 
Shone through the woodbine-wreaths 
which round my casement were. 

XLI. 

** 'T was like an eye which seemed to 

smile on me. 
I watcht till, by the sun made pale, 

it sank 
Under the billows of the heaving sea; 



But from its beams deep love my 

spirit drank, 
And to my brain the boundless world 
now shrank 
Into one thought — one image — yes, 
forever ! ! 

Even like the dayspring poured on \ 
vapors dank, \ 

The beams of that one Star did shoot {j 
and quiver li 

Through my benighted mind — and were i 
extinguished never. I 

t 

XLII. I 

"The day past thus: at night, me- \ 

thought in dream | 

A shape of speechless beauty did j 

appear; ; 

It stood like light on a careering stream i 

Of golden clouds which shook the 

atmosphere; — 
A winged youth, his radiant brow 
did wear 
The Morning Star: a wild dissolving j 
bliss ' 

Over my frame he breathed, ap- 
proaching near. 
And bent his eyes of kindling tender- i 
ness 
Near mine, and on my lips imprest a 
lingering kiss, — 

XLIII. 

"And said: 'A spirit loves thee, 
mortal maiden : 
How wilt thou prove thy worth?' 
Then joy and sleep 
Together fled, my soul was deeply 
laden. 
And to the shore I went to muse and 

weep; 
But, as I moved, over my heart did 
creep 
A joy less soft but more profound and 
strong 
Than my sweet dream, and it forbade 
to keep 
The path of the sea-shore : that Spirit's 
tongue 
Seemed whispering in nay heart, and 
bore my steps alorig. 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



^-il. 



XLIV. 

** How, to that vast and peopled city 
led 
Which was a field of holy warfare 
then, 
I walked among the dying and the 
dead, 
And shared in fearless deeds with 

evil men, 
Calm as an angel in the dragon's 
den — 
How I braved death for liberty and 
truth. 
And spurned at peace and power and 
fame — and, when 
Those hopes had lost the glory of their 
youth, 
How sadly I returned — might move the 
hearer's ruth. 

XLV. 

*' Warm tears throng fast ! the tale 
may not be said — 
Know then that, when this grief had 
been subdued, 
I was not left, like others, cold and 
dead. 
The Spirit whom I loved in solitude 
Sustained his child: the tempest- 
shaken wood. 
The waves, the fountains, and the 
hush of night — 
These were his voice; and well I 
understood 
His smile divine when the calm sea 
was bright 
With silent stars, and Heaven was 
breathless with delight. 

XLVI. 

" In lonely glens, amid the roar of 
rivers. 
When the dim nights were moonless, 
have I known 
Joys which no tongue can tell; my 
pale lip quivers 
When thought revisits them : — know 

thou alone 
That, after many wondrous years 
were f^own, 
I was awakened by a shriek of woe; 



And over me a mystic robe was 
thrown 
By viewless hands, and a bright Star 
did glow 
Before my steps — the Snake then met 
his mortal foe." 

XLVII. 

" Thou fearest not then the Serpent on 
thy heart? " 
" Fear it ! " she said with brief and 
passionate cry, — , 
And spake no more : that silence made 
me start — 
I lookt, and we were sailing pleas- 
antly. 
Swift as a cloud between the sea and 
sky, 
Beneath the rising moon seen far away; 
Mountains of ice, like sapphire, piled 
on high, 
Hemming the horizon round, in silence 
lay 
On the still waters, — these we did ap- 
proach alway. 

XLVIII. 

And swift and swifter grew the vessel's 
motion. 
So that a dizzy trance fell on my 
brain — 
Wild music woke me : we had passed 
the ocean 
Which girds the pole. Nature's re- 
motest reign — 
And we glode fast o'er a pellucid 
plain 
Of waters, azure with the noontide day. 
Ethereal mountains shone around — 
a Fane 
Stood in the midst, girt by green isles 
which lay 
On the blue sunny deep, resplendent far 
away. 

XLIX. 

It was a Temple such as mortal hand 
Has never built, nor ecstasy nor dream 

Reared in the cities of enchanted land: 
'T was likest heaven ere yet day's 
purple stream 



134 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 






Ebbs o'er the western forest, while 

the gleam 

Of the unrisen moon among the clouds 

Is gathering — when with many a 

golden beam 

The thronging constellations rush in 

crowds, 
Paving with fire the sky and the mar- 
moreal floods: 

L. 

Like what may be conceived of this 
vast dome 
When from the depths which thought 
can seldom pierce 
Genius beholds it rise, his native home, 
Girt by the deserts of the Universe, 
Yet nor in painting's light, or 
mightier verse. 
Or sculpture's marble language, can 
invest 
That shape to mortal sense — such 
glooms immerse 
That incommunicable sight, and rest 
Upon the laboring brain and over-bur- 
dened breast. 

LI. 

Winding among the lawny islands fair. 

Whose blosmy forests starred the 

shadowy deep, 

The wingless boat paused where an 

ivory stair 

Its fretwork in the crystal sea did 

steep 
Encircling that vast Fane's aerial 
heap: 
We disembarked, and through a portal 
wide 
We past — whose roof, of moon- 
stone carved, did keep 
A glimmering o'er the forms on every 
side. 
Sculptures like life and thought, immov- 
able, deep-eyed. 

LII. 

We came to a vast hall whose glorious 
roof 
Was diamond, which had drunk the 
lightning's sheen 



In darkness, and now poured it 
through the woof 
Of spell-inwoven clouds hung there 

to screen 
Its blinding splendor — through 
such veil was seen 
That work of subtlest power, divine 
and rare; 
Orb above orb, with starry shapes 
between. 
And horned moons, and meteors 
strange and fair. 
On night-black columns poised — one 
hollow hemisphere ! 

LIII. 

Ten thousand columns in that quiver- 
ing light 
Distinct — between whose shafts 
wound far away 
The long and labyrinthine aisles, 
more bright 
With their own radiance than the 

Heaven of Day; 
And on the jasper walls around 
there lay 
Paintings, the poesy of mightiest 
thought. 
Which did the Spirit's history dis- 
play; 
A tale of passionate change, divinely 

taught, 
Which in their winged dance uncon- 
scious Genii wrought. 

LIV. 

Beneath there sate on many a sapphire 
throne 
The Great who had departed from 
mankind, 
A mighty Senate; some, whose white 
hair shone 
Like mountain snow, mild, beauti- 
ful, and blind; 
Some, female forms, whose gestures 
beamed with mind; 
And ardent youths, and children bright 
and fair; 
And some had lyres whose strings 
were intertwined 
With pale and clinging flames, whiQh 
ever there 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



135 



Waked faint yet thrilling sounds that 
pierced the crystal air, 

LV. 

One seat was vacant in the midst, a 
throne 
Reared on a pyramid like sculptured 
flame, 
Distinct with circling steps which 
rested on 
Their own deep fire — Soon as the 

Woman came 
Into that hall, she shrieked the 
Spirit's name, 
And fell; and vanished slowly from 
the sight. 
Darkness arose from her dissolving 
frame, — 
Which, gathering, filled that dome of 
woven light, 
Blotting its sphered stars with super- 
natural night. 

LVI. 

Then first two glittering lights were 
seen to glide 
In circles on the amethystine floor. 
Small serpent eyes trailing from side 
to side. 
Like meteors on a river's grassy 

shore. 
They round each other rolled, 
dilating more 
And more — then rose, commingling 
into one, 
One clear and mighty planet hang- 
ing o'er 
A cloud of deepest shadow which was 
thrown 
Athwart the glowing steps and the crys- 
talline throne. 



LVII. 

The cloud which rested on that cone 
of flame 
Was cloven : beneath the planet 
sate a Form 
Fairer than tongue can speak or 
thought may frame. 
The radiance of whose limbs rose- 
like and warm 



Flowed forth, and did with softest 
light inform 
The shadowy dome, the sculptures, 
and the state 
Of those assembled shapes — with 
clinging charm 
Sinking upon their hearts and mine. 
He sate 
Majestic yet most mild — calm yet com- 
passionate. 

LVIII. 

Wonder and joy a passing faintness 
threw 
Over my brow — a hand supported 
me, 
Whose touch was magic strength : an 
eye of blue 
Looked into mine, like moonlight, 

soothingly; 
And a voice said: — " Thou must a 
listener be 
This day — two mighty Spirits now 
return. 
Like birds of calm, from the world's 
raging sea. 
They pour fresh light from Hope's 
immortal urn; 
A tale of human power — despair not — 
list and learn ! " 



LIX. 

I looked, and lo ! one stood forth elo- 
quently, 
His eyes were dark and deep, and 
the clear brow 
Which shadowed them was like the 
morning sky. 
The cloudless Heaven of Spring, 

when in their flow 
Through the bright air the soft 
winds as they blow 
Wake the green world: his gestures 
did obey 
The oracular mind that made his 
features glow. 
And, where his curved lips half-open 
lay, 
Passion's divinest stream had made im- 
petuous way. 



136 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



LX. 



Beneath the darkness of his outspread 
hair 
He stood thus beautiful : but there 
was One 
Who sate beside him like his shadow 
there, 
And held his hand — far lovelier — 

she was known 
To be thus fair by the few lines 
alone 
Which through her floating locks and 
gathered cloak, 
Glances of soul-dissolving glory, 
shone : — 
None else beheld her eyes — in him 
they woke 
Memories which found a tongue as thus 
he silence broke. 



CANTO II. 



The star-light smile of children, the 

sweet looks 

Of women, the fair breast from 

which I fed. 

The murmur of the unreposing brooks. 

And the green light which, shifting 

overhead. 
Some tangled bower of vines around 
me shed, 
The shells on the sea-sand, and the 
wild flowers. 
The lamp-light through the rafters 
cheerly spread. 
And on the twining flax — in life's 
young hours 
These sights and sounds did nurse my 
spirit's folded powers. 

II. 

In Argolis beside the echoing sea, 
Such impulses within my mortal 
frame 
Arose, and they were dear to memory, 
Like tokens of the dead: — but 

others came 
Soon, in another shape: the won- 
drous fame 



Of the past world, the vital words and' 
deeds I 

Of minds whom neither time nor 
change can tame, 
Traditions dark and old whence evil 
creeds 
Start forth, and whose dim shauc a 
stream of poison feeds. 

III. 

I heard, as all have heard, the various 
story 
Of human life, and wept unwilling [ 
tears. 
Feeble historians of its shame and 
glory, 
False disputants on all its hopes and 1 

fears. 
Victims who worshipt ruin, chron- 
iclers 
Of daily scorn, and slaves who loathed 
their state, 
Yet, flattering Power, had given its 
ministers 
A throne of judgment in the grave — 
't was fate f 

That among such as these my youths 
should seek its mate. J 

IV. \ 

The land in which I lived by a fell j 

bane 1 

Was withered up. Tyrants dwelt 

side by side, j 

And stabled in our homes — until the j 

chain j 

Stifled the captive's cry, and to \ 

abide j 

That blasting curse men had no i 

shame — all vied j 

In evil, slave and despot; fear with lust j 

Strange fellowship through mutual I 

hate had tied, 

Like two dark serpents tangled in the 

dust, ! 

Which on the paths of men their min- j 

gling poison thrust. J 

V. 

Earth, our bright home, its mountains 
and its waters, I 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



137 



And the ethereal shapes which are 
suspended 
Over its green expanse, and those fair 
daughters, 
The clouds, of Sun and Ocean, who 

have blended 
The colors of the air since first ex- 
tended 
It cradled the young world, none wan- 
dered forth 
To see or feel : a darkness had de- 
scended 
On every heart : the light which shows 
its worth 
Must among gentle thoughts and fear- 
less take its birth. 

VI. 

This vital world, this home of happy 
spirits, 
Was as a dungeon to my blasted 
kind. 
All that Despair from murdered Hope 
inherits 
They sought, and, in their helpless 

misery blind, 
A deeper prison and heavier chains 
did find, 
And stronger tyrants: — a dark gulf 
before, 
The realm of a stern Ruler, yawned; 
behind, 
Terror and Time conflicting drove, 
and bore 
On their tempestuous flood the shriek- 
ing wretch from shore. 

VII. 

Out of that ocean's wrecks had Guilt 
and Woe 
Framed a dark dwelling for their 
homeless thought. 
And, starting at the ghosts which to 
and fro 
Glide o'er its dim and gloomy strand, 

had brought 
The worship thence which they each 
other taught. 
Well might men loathe their life ! well 
might they turn 
Even to the ills again from which 
they sought 



Such refuge after death ! well might 
they learn 
To gaze on this fair world with hopeless 
unconcern ! 

VIII. 

For they all pined in bondage; body 
and soul, 
Tyrant and slave, victim and tor- 
turer, bent 
Before one Power, to which supreme 
control 
Over their will by their own weak- 
ness lent 
Made all its many names omnipotent ; 
All symbols of things evil, all divine; 
And hymns of blood or mockery, 
which rent 
The air from all its fanes, did inter- 
twine 
Imposture's impious toils round each 
discordant shrine. 

IX. 

I heard, as all have heard, life's vari- 
ous story. 
And in no careless heart transcribed 
the tale; 
But from the sneers of men who had 
grown hoary 
In shame and scorn, from groans of 

crowds made pale 
By famine, from a mother's deso- 
late wail 
O'er her polluted child, from innocent 
blood 
Poured on the earth, and brows 
anxious and pale 
With the heart's warfare, did I gather 
food 
To feed my many thoughts — a tameless 
multitude ! 



X. 



I wandered through the wrecks of 

days departed 
Far by the desolated shore, when 

even 
O'er the still sea and jagged islets 

darted 



13^ 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



The light of moonrise; in the north- 
ern heaven, 
Among the clouds near the horizon 
driven, 
The mountains lay beneath one planet 
pale; 
Around me broken tombs and col- 
umns riven 
Looked vast in twilight, and the sor- 
rowing gale 
Waked in those ruins gray its everlast- 
ing wail ! 



XI. 



I knew not who had framed these 
wonders then, 
Nor had I heard the story of their 
deeds; 
But dwellings of a race of mightier 
men, 
And monuments of less ungentle 

creeds. 
Tell their own tale to him who 
wisely heeds 
The language which they speak; and 
now to me 
The moonlight making pale the 
blooming weeds. 
The bright stars shining in the breath- 
less sea, 
Interpreted those scrolls of mortal mys- 
tery. 

XII. 

Such man has been, and such may yet 
become ! 
Ay, wiser, greater, gentler, even 
than they 
Who on the fragments of yon shattered 
dome 
Have stamped the sign of power — 

I felt the sway 
Of the vast stream of ages bear away 
My floating thoughts — my heart beat 
loud and fast — 
Even as a storm let loose beneath 
the ray 
Of the still moon, my spirit onward 
past 
Beneath truth's steady beams upon its 
tumult cast. 



XIII. 

It shall be thus no more ! too long, 
too long. 
Sons of the glorious dead, have 
ye lain bound 
In darkness and in ruin ! — Hope is 
strong. 
Justice and Truth their winged child 

have found ! — 
Awake ! arise ! until the mighty 
sound 
Of your career shall scatter in its gust 
The thrones of the oppressor, and 
the ground 
Hide the last altar's unregarded dust, 
Whose Idol has so long betrayed your 
impious trust ! 

XIV. 

It must be so — I will arise and waken 
The multitude, and, like a sulphur- 
ous hill 
Which on a sudden from its snows 
has shaken 
The swoon of ages, it shall burst, 

and fill 
The world with cleansing fire; it 
must, it will — 
It may not be restrained ! — and who 
shall stand 
Amid the rocking earthquake stead- 
fast still. 
But Laon? on high Freedom's desert 
land 
A tower whose marble walls the leagued 
storms withstand ! 

XV. 

One summer night, in commune with 
the hope 
Thus deeply fed, amid those ruins 
gray 
I watched, beneath the dark sky's 
starry cope; 
And ever, from that hour, upon me 

lay 
The burden of this hope, and night 
or day, 
In vision or in dream, clove to my 
breast : 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



139 



Among mankind, or when gone far 


Did Laon and his friend, on one graj 


away 


plinth, 


To the lone shores and mountains. 


Round whose worn base the wile 


't was a guest 


waves hiss and leap, 


Which followed where I fled, and 


Resting at eve, a lofty converse 


watcht when I did rest. 


keep: 




And that this friend was false may now 


XVI. 


be said 




Calmly — that he, like other men, 


These hopes found words through 


could weep 


which my spirit sought 


Tears which are lies, and could betray 


To weave a bondage of such sym- 


and spread 


pathy 


Snares for that guileless heart which for 


As might create some response to the 


his own had bled. 


thought 




Which ruled me now — and as the 


XIX. 


vapors lie 




Bright in the outspread morning's 


Then, had no great aim recompensed 


radiancy. 


my sorrow, 


So were these thoughts invested with 


I must have sought dark respite 


the light 


from its stress 


Of language; and all bosoms made 


In dreamless rest, in sleep that sees no 


reply 


morrow — 


On which its lustre streamed, when- 


For to tread life's dismaying wilder- 


e'er it might 


ness 


Through darkness wide and deep those 


Without one smile to cheer, one 


tranced spirits smite. 


voice to bless, 




Amid the snares and scoffs of human- 


XVII. 


kind, 




Is hard — but I betrayed it not, nor 


Yes, many an eye with dizzy tears was 


less, 


dim, 


With love that scorned return, sought 


And oft I thought to clasp my own 


to unbind 


heart's brother, 


The interwoven clouds which make its 


When I could feel the listener's senses 


wisdom blind. 


swim, 




And hear his breath its own swift 


XX. 


gaspings smother 




Even as my words evoked them — 


With deathless minds, which leave 


and another, 


where they have past 


And yet another, I did fondly deem, 


A path of light, my soul communion 


Felt that we all were sons of one 


knew; 


great mother; 


Till from that glorious intercourse, at 


And the cold truth such sad reverse 


last. 


did seem 


As from a mine of magic store, I 


As to awake in grief from some delight- 


drew 


ful dream. 


Words which were weapons; — 




round my heart there grew 


XVIII. 


The adamantine armor of their power, 




And from my fancy wings of golden 


Yes, oft beside the ruined labyrinth 


hue 


Which skirts the hoary caves of the 


Sprang forth — yet not alone from 


green deep 


wisdom's tower. 



140 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



A minister of truth, these plumes young 
Laon bore. 

XXI. 

An orphan with my parents lived, 
whose eyes 
Were lodestars of delight which 
drew me home 
When I might wander forth; nor did 
I prize 
Aught human thing beneath 

heaven's mighty dome 
Beyond this child: so, when sad 
hours were come, 
And baffled hope like ice still clung to 
me, 
Since kin were cold, and friends 
had now become 
Heartless and false, I turned from all 
to be, 
Cythna, the only source of tears and 
smiles to thee. 

XXII. 

What wert thou then? A child most 
infantine. 
Yet wandering far beyond that in- 
nocent age 
In all but its sweet looks and mien 
divine : 
Even then, methought, with the 

world's tyrant rage 
A patient warfare thy young heart 
did wage, 
When those soft eyes of scarcely con- 
scious thought 
Some tale or thine own fancies 
would engage 
To overflow with tears, or converse 
fraught 
With passion o'er their depths its fleet- 
ing light had wrought. 

XXIII. 

She moved upon this earth a shape of 

brightness, 
A power that from its objects 

scarcely drew 
One impulse of her being — in her 

lightness 



Most like some radiant cloud of 

morning dew 
Which wanders through the waste 
air's pathless blue 
To nourish some far desert; she did 
seem, 
Beside me, gathering beauty as she 
grew, 
Like the bright shade of some im- 
mortal dream 
Which walks, when tempest sleeps, the 
wave of life's dark stream. 

XXIV. 

As mine own shadow was this child 

to me, 

A second self, far dearer and more 

fair. 

Which clothed in undissolving radiancy 

All those steep paths which languor 

and despair 
Of human things had made so dark 
and bare, 
But which I trod alone — nor, till 
bereft 
Of friends, and overcome by lonely 
care, 
Knew I what solace for that loss was 
left. 
Though by a bitter wound my trusting 
heart was cleft. 

XXV. 

Once she was dear, now she was all I 
had 
To love in human life — this play- 
mate sweet, 
This child of twelve years old — so 
she was made 
My sole associate, and her willing 

feet 
Wandered with mine where earth 
and ocean meet, 
Beyond the aerial mountains whose 
vast cells 
The unreposing billows ever beat, 
Through forests wide and old, and 
lawny dells 
Where boughs of incense droop over 
the emerald wells. 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



141 



XXVI. 

And warm and light I felt her clasping 
hand 
When twined in mine : she followed 
where I went, 
Through the lone paths of our im- 
mortal land. 
It had no waste but some memorial 

lent 
Which strung me to my toil — some 
monument 
Vital with mind: then Cythna by my 
side, 
Until the bright and beaming day 
were spent, 
Would rest, with looks entreating to 
abide, 
Too earnest and too sweet ever to be 
denied. 

XXVII. 

And soon I could not have refused 
her — Thus, 
Forever, day and night, we two 
were ne'er 
Parted, but when brief sleep divided 
us: 
And, when the pauses of the lulling 

air 
Of noon beside the sea had made a 
lair 
For her soothed senses, in my arms 
she slept. 
And I kept watch over her slumbers 
there. 
While, as the shifting visions o'er her 
swept. 
Amid her innocent rest by turns she 
smiled and wept. 

XXVIII. 

And in the murmur of her dreams 

was heard 
Sometimes the name of Laon: — 

suddenly 
She would arise, and, like the secret 

bird 
Whom sunset wakens, fill the shore 

and sky 
With her sweet accents — a wild 

melody ! 



Hymns which my soul had woven to 
Freedom, strong 
The source of passion, whence they 
rose, to be; 
Triumphant strains which, like a 
spirit's tongue, 
To the enchanted waves that child of 
glory sung — 

XXIX. 

Her white arms lifted through the 
shadowy stream 
Of her loose hair — O excellently 
great 
Seemed to me then my purpose, the 
vast theme 
Of those impassioned songs, when 

Cythna sate 
Amid the calm which rapture doth 
create 
After its tumult, her heart vibrating. 
Her spirit o'er the ocean's floating 
state 
From her deep eyes far wandering, on 
the wing 
Of visions that were mine, beyond its 
utmost spring. 

XXX. 

For, before Cythna loved it, had my 
song 
Peopled with thoughts the bound- 
less universe, 
A mighty congregation, which were 
strong, 
Where'er they trod the darkness, 

to disperse 
The cloud of that unutterable curse 
Which clings upon mankind: — all 
things became 
Slaves to my holy and heroic verse, 
Earth, sea and sky, the planets, life 
and fame, 
And fate, or whate'er else binds the 
world's wondrous frame. 

XXXI. 

And this beloved child thus felt the 
sway 
Of my conceptions, gathering like a 
cloud 



142 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



The very wind on which it rolls away : 
Hers too were all my thoughts ere 

yet, endowed 
With music and with light, their 
fountains flowed 
In poesy; and her still and earnest 
face, 
Pallid with feelings which intensely 
glowed 
Within, was turned on mine with 
speechless grace. 
Watching the hopes which there her 
heart had learned to trace. 

XXXII. 

In me communion with this purest 
being 
Kindled intenser zeal, and made me 
wise 
In knowledge, which in hers mine own 
mind seeing 
Left in the human world few mys- 
teries. 
How without fear of evil or disguise 
Was Cythna ! — what a spirit strong 
and mild, 
Which death or pain or peril could 
despise, 
Yet melt in tenderness ! what genius 
wild 
Yet mighty was enclosed within one 
simple child ! 

XXXIII. 

New lore was this — old age, with its 
gray hair, 
And wrinkled legends of unworthy 
things. 
And icy sneers, is naught : it cannot 
dare 
To burst the chains which life forever 

flings 
On the entangled soul's aspiring 
wings, 
So is it cold and cruel, and is made 
The careless slave of that dark power 
which brings 
Evil, like blight, on man, who, still 
betrayed. 
Laughs o'er the grave in which his living 
hopes are laid. 



XXXIV. 

Nor are the strong and the severe to 
keep 
The empire of the world: thus 
Cythna taught 
Even in the visions of her eloquent 
sleep. 
Unconscious of the power through 

which she wrought 
The woof of such intelligible thought. 
As from the tranquil strength which 
cradled lay 
In her smile-peopled rest, my spirit 
sought 
Why the deceiver and the slave has 
sway 
O'er heralds so divine of truth's arising 
day. 

XXXV. 

Within that fairest form the female 
mind. 
Untainted by the poison-clouds which 
rest 
On the dark world, a sacred home did 
find: 
But else from the wide earth's ma- 
ternal breast 
Victorious Evil, which had dispos- 
sest 
All native power, had those fair 
children torn, 
And made them slaves to soothe his 
vile unrest, 
And minister to lust its joys forlorn. 
Till they had learned to breathe the 
atmosphere of scorn. 

XXXVI. 

This misery was but coldly felt till she 
Became my only friend, who had 
endued 
My purpose with a wider sympathy; 
Thus Cythna mourned with me the 

servitude 
In which the half of humankind 
were mewed. 
Victims of lust and hate, the slaves of 
slaves, 
She mourned that grace and power 
were thrown as food 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



M3 



To the hyena lust, who among graves 
Over his loathed meal, laughing in 
agony, raves. 

XXXVII. 

And I, siill gazing on that glorious 
child, 
Even as these thoughts flushed o'er 
her: — " Cythna sweet, 
Well with the world art thou unrec- 
onciled; 
Never will peace and human nature 

meet 
Till free and equal man and woman 
greet 
Domestic peace; and, ere this power 
can make 
In human hearts its calm and holy 
seat. 
This slavery must be broken " — as I 
spake, 
From Cythna's eyes a light of exultation 
brake. 

XXXVIII. 

She replied earnestly: — "It shall be 
mine. 
This task, — mine, Laon ! — thou 
hast much to gain; 
Nor wilt thou at poor Cythna's pride 
repine. 
If she should lead a happy female 

train 
To meet thee over the rejoicing 
plain, 
"When myriads at thy call shall throng 
around 
The Golden City." — Then the 
child did strain 
My arm upon her tremulous heart, and 
wound 
Her own about my neck, till some reply 
she found. 

XXXIX. 

I smiled, and spake not. — "Where- 
fore dost thou smile 
At what I say? Laon, I am not 
weak, 

And, though my cheek might become 
pale the while, 



With thee, if thou desirest, will I 

seek, 
Through their array of banded slaves, 
to wreak 
Ruin upon the tyrants. I had thought 
It was more hard to turn my un- 
practised cheek 
To scorn and shame, and this beloved 
spot 
And thee, O dearest friend, to leave and 
murmur not. 

XL. 

"Whence came I what I am? Thou, 
Laon, knowest 
How a young child should thus un- 
daunted be; 
Methinks it is a power which thou 
bestowest, 
Through which I seek, by most 

resembling thee. 
So to become most good and great 
and free; 
Yet, far beyond this Ocean's utmost 
roar, 
In towers and huts are many like to 
me, 
Who, could they see thine eyes, or 
feel such lore 
As I have learnt from them, like me 
would fear no more. 

XLI. 

"Think' St thou that I shall speak un- 
skilfully. 
And none will heed me? I remem- 
ber now 
How once a slave in tortures doomed 
to die 
Was saved because in accents sweet 

and low 
He sung a song his judge loved long 
ago. 
As he was led to death. — All shall 
relent 
Who hear me — tears, as mine have 
flowed, shall flow, 
Hearts beat as mine now beats, with 
such intent 
As renovates the world; a will omnipo- 
tent ! 



144 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



XLII. 

•' Yes, I will tread Pride's golden 

palaces, 

Through Penury's roofless huts and 

squalid cells 

"Will I descend, where'er in abjectness 

Woman with some vile slave her 

tyrant dwells. 
There with the music of thine own 
sweet spells 
Will disenchant the captives, and will 
pour 
For the despairing, from the crystal 
wells 
Of thy deep spirit, reason's mighty 
lore, 
And power shall then abound, and hope 
arise once more. 

XLIII. 

"Can man be free if woman be a 
slave? 
Chain one who lives, and breathes 
this boundless air, 
To the corruption of a closed grave ! 
Can they whose mates are beasts 

condemned to bear 
Scorn heavier far than toil or anguish 
dare 
To trample their oppressors? In their 
home. 
Among their babes, thou knowest a 
curse would wear 
The shape of woman — hoary Crime 

would come 
Behind, and Fraud rebuild Religion's 
tottering dome. 

XLIV. 

** I am a child : — I would not yet de- 
part. 
When I go forth alone, bearing the 
lamp 
Aloft which thou hast kindled in my 
heart, 
Millions of slaves from many a dun- 
geon damp 
Shall leap in joy, as the benumbing 
cramp 
Of ages leaves their limbs — no ill 
may harm 



Thy Cythna ever — truth its radiant 
stamp 
Has fixt, as an invulnerable charm. 
Upon her children's brow, dark False- 
hood to disarm. 

XLV. 

"Wait yet awhile for the appointed 
day — 
Thou wilt depart, and I with tears 
shall stand 
Watching thy dim sail skirt the ocean 
gray; 
Amid the dwellers of this lonely land 
I shall remain alone — and thy com- 
mand 
Shall then dissolve the world's unquiet 
trance. 
And, multitudinous as the desert 
sand 
Borne on the storm, its millions shall 
advance. 
Thronging round thee, the light of their 
deliverance. 

XLVI. 

"Then, like the forests of some path- 
less mountain 
Which from remotest glens two 
warring winds 
Involve in fire which not the loosened 
fountain 
Of broadest floods might quench, 

shall all the kinds 
Of evil catch from our uniting minds 
The spark which must consume them; 
— Cythna then 
Will have cast off the impotence 
that binds 
Her childhood now, and through the 
paths of men 
Will pass, as the charmed bird that 
haunts the serpent's den. 

XLVII. 

"We part! — O Laon, I must dare, 
nor tremble. 
To meet those looks no more ! — 
Oh heavy stroke ! 

Sweet brother of my soul ! can I dis- 
semble 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



M5 



The agony of this thought?" — As 

thus she spoke, 
The gathered sobs her quivering ac- 
cents broke, 
And in my arms she hid her beating 
breast. 
I remained still for tears — sudden 
she woke 
As one awakes from sleep, and wildly 
prest 
My bosom, her whole frame impetuously 
possest. 

XLVIII. 

**We part to meet again — but yon 
blue waste, 
Yon desert wide and deep, holds no 
recess 
Within whose happy silence, thus em- 
braced, 
We might survive all ills in one 

caress : 
Nor doth the grave — I fear 't is 
passionless — 
Nor yon cold vacant Heaven : — we 
meet again 
Within the minds of men, whose 
lips shall bless 
Our memory, and whose hopes its light 

retain, 
When these dissevered bones are trod- 
den in the plain." 

XLIX. 

I could not speak, though she had 
ceased, for now 
The fountains of her feeling, swift 
and deep. 
Seemed to suspend the tumult of their 
flow; 
So we arose, and by the starlight 

steep 
Went homeward — neither did we 
speak nor weep. 
But, pale, were calm with passion — 
Thus subdued, 
Like evening shades that o'er the 
mountains creep. 
We moved towards our home; where, 
in this mood, 
Each from the other sought refuge in 
solitude. 



CANTO III. 

I. 

What thoughts had sway o'er Cythna's 
lonely slumber 
That night I know not; but my own 
did seem 
As if they might ten-thousand years 
outnumber 
Of waking life, the visions of a 

dream 
Which hid in one dim gulf the 
troubled stream 
Of mind; a boundless chaos wild and 
vast. 
Whose limits yet were never mem- 
ory's theme : 
And I lay struggling as its whirlwinds 
past, 
Sometimes for rapture sick, sometimes 
for pain aghast. 

II. 

Two hours, whose mighty circle did 
embrace 
More time than might make gray 
the infant world. 
Rolled thus, a weary and tumultuous 
space : 
When the third came, like mist on 

breezes curled, 
From my dim sleep a shadow was 
unfurled : 
Methought, upon the threshold of a 
cave 
I sate with Cythna ; drooping bry- 
ony, pearled 
With dew from the wild streamlet's 
shattered wave, 
Hung, where we sate to taste the joys 
which Nature gave. 

in. 

We lived a day as we were wont to 
live, 
But Nature had a robe of glory on, 
And the bright air o'er every shape 
did weave 
Intenser hues, so that the herbless 
stone, 



146 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



The leafless bough among the 
leaves alone, 
Had being clearer than its own could 
be, — 
And Cythna's pure and radiant self 
was shown. 
In this strange vision, so divine to me 
That, if I loved before, now love was 
agony. 

IV. 

Morn fled, noon came, evening, then 
night, descended, 
And we prolonged calm talk beneath 
the sphere 
Of the calm moon — when suddenly 
was blended 
With our repose a nameless sense 

of fear; 
And from the cave behind I seemed 
to hear 
Sounds gathering upwards — accents 
incomplete 
And stifled shrieks, — and now, 
more near and near, 
A tumult and a rush of thronging feet 
The cavern's secret depths beneath the 
earth did beat. 



The scene was changed, and away, 
away, away ! 
Through the air and over the sea 
we sped. 
And Cythna in my sheltering bosom 
lay. 
And the winds bore me — through 

the darkness spread 
Around, the gaping earth then 
vomited 
Legions of foul and ghastly shapes, 
which hung 
Upon my flight; and ever as we 
fled. 
They plucked at Cythna — soon to me 
then clung 
A sense of actual things those monstrous 
dreams among. 

VI. 

And I lay struggling in the impotence 
Of sleep, while outward life had 
burst its bound, 



Though, still deluded, strove the tor- 
tured sense 
To its dire wanderings to adapt the 

sound 
Which in the light of morn was 
poured around 
Our dwelling — breathless, pale, and 
unaware, 
I rose, and all the cottage crowded 
found 
With armed men, whose glittering 
swords were bare. 
And whose degraded limbs the tyrant's 
garb did wear. 

VII. 

And, ere with rapid lips and gathered 
brow 
I could demand the cause, a feeble 
shriek — 
It was a feeble shriek, faint, far, and 
low — ] 

Arrested me — my mien grew calm / 

and meek. 
And, grasping a small knife, I went 
to seek 
That voice among the crowd — 't was ( 
Cythna's cry ! 
Beneath most calm resolve did agony 
wreak 
Its whirlwind rage : — so I past quietly, 
Till I beheld where bound that dearest 
child did lie. 

VIII. 

I started to behold her, for delight 

And exultation, and a joyance free. 
Solemn, serene, and lofty, filled the 
light 
Of the calm smile with which she 

looked on me: 
So that I feared some brainless 
ecstasy, 
Wrought from that bitter woe, had 
wildered her — 
" Farewell ! farewell !" she said, as 
I drew nigh. 
"At first my peace was marred by 
this strange stir, | 

Now I am calm as truth — its chosen ,i 
minister. 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



147 



IX. 

" Look not so, Laon — say farewell in 
hope, 
These bloody men are but the slaves 
who bear 
Their mistress to her task — it was my 
scope 
The slavery where they drag me 

now to share, 
And among captives willing chains 
to wear 
Awhile — the rest thou knowest — Re- 
turn, dear friend ! 
Let our first triumph trample the 
despair 
Which would ensnare us now, for, 
in the end, 
In victory or in death our hopes and 
fears must blend." 

X. 

These words had fallen on my unheed- 
ing ear. 
Whilst I had watched the motions 
of the crew 
With seeming-careless glance; not 
many were 
Around her, for their comrades just 

withdrew 
To guard some other victim — so I 
drew 
My knife, and with one impulse, sud- 
denly. 
All unaware three of their number 
slew. 
And grasped a fourth by the throat, 
and with loud cry 
My countrymen invoked to death or 
liberty ! 

XI. 

What followed then I know not — for 

a stroke 
On my raised arm and naked head 

came down, 
Filling my eyes with blood. — When 

I awoke, 
I felt that they had bound me in 

my swoon, 
And up a rock which overhangs the 

town, 



By the steep path, were bearing me : 
below 
The plain was filled with slaughter, 
— overthrown 
The vineyards and the harvests, and 
the glow 
Of blazing roofs shone far o'er the white 
ocean's flow. 

XII. 

Upon that rock a mighty column 
stood 
Whose capital seemed sculptured in 
the sky, 
Which to the wanderers o'er the soli- 
tude 
Of distant seas, from ages long gone 

by, 

Had made a landmark; o'er its 
heights to fly 
Scarcely the cloud, the vulture, or the 
blast. 
Has power — and, when the shades 
of evening lie 
On earth and ocean, its carved sum- 
mits cast 
The sunken daylight far through the 
aerial waste. 

XIII. 

They bore me to a cavern in the hill 
Beneath that column, and unbound 
me there : 
And one did strip me stark; and one 
did fill 
A vessel from the putrid pool; one 

bare 
A lighted torch, and four with friend- 
less care 
Guided my steps the cavern-paths 
along. 
Then up a steep and dark and nar- 
row stair 
We wound, until the torch's fiery 
tongue 
Amid the gushing day beamless and 
pallid hung. 

XIV. 

They raised me to the platform of the 
pile. 



148 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



That column's dizzy height: the 
grate of brass, 
Through which they thrust me, open 
stood the while, 
As to its ponderous and suspended 

mass, 
With chains which eat into the flesh, 
alas ! 
With brazen links, my naked limbs 
they bound : 
The grate, as they departed to re- 
pass. 
With horrid clangor fell, and the far 
sound 
Of their retiring steps in the dense gloom 
was drowned. 



XV. 

The noon was calm and bright : — 
around that column 
The overhanging sky and circling 
sea 
Spread forth, in silentness profound 
and solemn, 
The darkness of brief frenzy cast on 

me. 
So that I knew not my own misery : 
The islands and the mountains in the 
day 
Like clouds reposed afar; and I 
could see 
The town among the woods below 
that lay. 
And the dark rocks which bound the 
bright and glassy bay. 

XVI. 

It was so calm that scarce the feathery 
weed 
Sown by some eagle on the topmost 
stone 
Swayed in the air:— so bright that 
noon did breed 
No shadow in the sky beside mine 

own — 
Mine, and the shadow of my chain 
alone. 
Below, the smoke of roofs involved in 
flame 
Rested like night, all else was clearly 
shown •j 



In that broad glare, — yet sound to 
me none came, 
But of the living blood that ran within 
my frame. 

XVII. 

The peace of madness fled, and ah, too 

soon ! 

A ship was lying on the sunny main. 

Its sails were flagging in the breathless 

noon — 

Its shadow lay beyond — That sight 

again 
Waked with its presence in my 
tranced brain 
The stings of a known sorrow, keen 
and cold : 
I knew that ship bore Cythna o'er 
the plain 
Of waters, to her blighting slavery 
sold. 
And watched it with such thoughts as 
must remain untold. 

XVIII. 

I watcht, until the shades of evening 
wrapt 
Earth like an exhalation — then the 
bark 
Moved, for that calm was by the sun- 
set snapt. 
It moved a speck upon the ocean 

dark : 
Soon the wan stars came forth, and 
I could mark 
Its path no more ! I sought to close 
mine eyes, i 

But, like the balls, their lids were ' 
stiff and stark; 
I would have risen, but ere that I 
could rise 
My parched skin was split with piercing 
agonies. 1 

XIX. 

I gnawed my brazen chain, and sought 
to sever 
Its adamantine links, that I might 
die; 
O Liberty ! forgive the base endeavor, 
Forgive me if, reserved for victory, 






THE REVOLT OE ISLAM. 



149 



The Champion of thy faith e'er 
sought to fly ! 
That starry night with its clear silence 
sent 
Tameless resolve which laughed at 
misery 
Into my soul — linked remembrance 
lent 
To that such power, to me such a severe 
content. 

XX. 

To breathe, to be, to hope, or to de- 
spair 
And die, I questioned not; nor, 
though the sun. 
Its shafts of agony kindling through 
the air, 
Moved over me, nor though, in even- 
ing dun, 
Or when the stars their visible 
courses run, 
Or morning, the wide universe was 
spread 
In dreary calmness round me, did I 
shun 
Its presence, nor seek refuge with the 
dead 
From one faint hope whose flower a 
dropping poison shed. 

XXI. 

Two days thus past — I neither raved 
nor died — 
Thirst raged within me, like a scor- 
pion's nest 
Built in mine entrails; I had spurned 
aside 
The water-vessel while despair pos- 

sest 
My thoughts, and now no drop re- 
mained ! The uprest 
Of the third sun brought hunger — but 
the crust 
Which had been left was to my 
craving breast 
Fuel, not food. I chewed the bitter 
dust, 
And bit my bloodless arm, and licked 
the brazen rust. 



XXII. 

My brain began to fail when the fourth 
morn 
Burst o'er the golden isles — a fear- 
ful sleep, 
Which through the caverns dreary 
and forlorn 
Of the riven soul sent its foul 

dreams to sweep 
With whirlwind swiftness — a fall 
far and deep — 
A gulf, a void, a sense of senseless- 
ness — 
These things dwelt in me, even as 
shadows keep 
Their watch in some dim charnel's 
loneliness, — 
A shoreless sea, a sky sunless and 
planetless ! 

XXIII. 

The forms which peopled this terrific 
trance 
I well remember — like a choir of 
devils. 
Around me they involved a giddy 
dance; 
Legions seemed gathering from the 

misty levels 
Of ocean to supply those ceaseless 
revels. 
Foul ceaseless shadows: — thought 
could not divide 
The actual world from these en- 
tangling evils. 
Which so bemocked themselves that 
I descried 
All shapes like mine own self hideously 
multiplied. 

XXIV. 

The sense of day and night, of false 

and true. 
Was dead within me. Yet two 

visions burst 
That darkness — one, as since that 

hour I knew. 
Was not a phantom of the realms 

accurst 
Where then my spirit dwelt — but, 

of the first, 



150 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



I know not yet was it a dream or no. 
But both, though not distincter, 
were immersed 
In hues which, when through memory's 
waste they flow, 
Make their divided streams more bright 
and rapid now. 

XXV. 

Methought that grate was lifted, and 
the seven 
Who brought me thither four stiff 
corpses bare. 
And from the frieze to the four winds 
of Heaven 
Hung them on high by the en- 
tangled hair; 
Swarthy were three — the fourth 
was very fair : 
As they retired, the golden moon up- 
sprung, 
And eagerly, out in the giddy air 
Leaning that I might eat, I stretched 
and clung 
Over the shapeless depth in which those 
corpses hung. 

XXVI. 

A woman's shape, now lank and cold 
and blue. 
The dwelling of the many-colored 
worm. 
Hung there; the white and hollow 
cheek I drew 
To my dry lips — What radiance 

did inform 
Those horny eyes? whose was that 
withered form? 
Alas, alas ! it seemed that Cythna's 
ghost 
Laught in those looks, and that 
the flesh was warm 
Within my teeth ! — A whirlwind keen 
as frost 
Then in its sinking gulfs my sickening 
spirit tost. 

XXVII. 

Then seemed it that a tameless hurri- 
cane 



Arose, and bore me in its dark 
career 
Beyond the sun, beyond the stars that 
wane 
On the verge of formless space — it 

languished there. 
And, dying, left a silence lone and 
drear, 
More horrible than famine: — in the 
deep 
The shape of an old man did then 
appear. 
Stately and beautiful; that dreadful 
sleep 
His heavenly smiles dispersed, and I 
could wake and weep. 

XXVIII. 

And, when the blinding tears had 
fallen, I saw 
That column and those corpses and 
the moon. 
And felt the poisonous tooth of hunger 
gnaw 
My vitals, I rejoiced, as if the boon 
Of senseless death would be ac- 
corded soon; — 
When from that stony gloom a voice 
arose, 
Solemn and sweet as when low 
winds attune 
The midnight pines; the grate did 
then unclose. 
And on that reverend form the moon- 
light did repose. 

XXIX. 

He struck my chains, and gently spake 
and smiled; 
As they were loosened by that 
Hermit old. 
Mine eyes were of their madness half 
beguiled, 
To answer those kind looks. — He 

did enfold 
His giant arms around me, to up- 
hold 
My wretched frame, my scorched 
limbs he wound 
In linen moist and balmy, and as 
cold 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



151 



As dew to drooping leaves: the chain, 
with sound 
Like earthquake, through the chasm of 
that steep stair did bound, 

XXX. 

As, lifting me, it fell ! — What next I 
heard 
Were billows leaping on the harbor- 
bar 
And the shrill sea-wind, whose breath 
idly stirred 
My hair; — I looked abroad, and 

saw a star 
Shining beside a sail, and distant 
far 
That mountain and its column, the 
known mark 
Of those who in the wide deep 
wandering are. 
So that I feared some Spirit fell and 
dark 
In trance had lain me thus within a 
fiendish bark. 

XXXI. 

For now indeed over the salt sea-billow 

I sailed : yet dared not look upon 

the shape 

Of him who ruled the helm, although 

the pillow 

For my light head was hollowed in 

his lap, 
And my bare limbs his mantle did 
enwrap, 
Fearing it was a fiend : at last, he bent 
O'er me his aged face, as if to snap 
Those dreadful thoughts the gentle 
grandsire bent, 
AAnd to my inmost soul his soothing 
looks he sent. 

XXXII. 

A soft and healing potion to my lips 
At intervals he raised — now looked 

on high, 
To mark if yet the starry giant dips 
His zone in the dim sea — now 

cheeringly, 



Though he said little, did he speak 
to me. 
"It is a friend beside thee — take good 
cheer. 
Poor victim, thou art now at lib- 
erty !" 
I joyed as those, a human tone to 
hear. 
Who in cells deep and lone have lan- 
guisht many a year. 



XXXIII. 

A dim and feeble joy, whose glimpses 
oft 
Were quencht in a relapse of wilder- 
ing dreams, 
Yet still methought we sailed, until 
aloft 
The stars of night grew pallid, and 

the beams 
Of morn descended on the ocean- 
streams, 
And still that aged man, so grand and 
mild, 
Tended me, even as some sick 
mother seems 
To hang in hope over a dying child, 
Till in the azure East darkness again 
was piled. 



XXXIV. 

And then the night-wind, steaming from 
the shore. 
Sent odors dying sweet across the 
sea. 
And the swift boat the little waves 
which bore 
Were cut by its keen keel, though 

slantingly; 
Soon I could hear the leaves sigh, 
and could see 
The myrtle-blossoms starring the dim 
grove, 
As past the pebbly beach the boat 
did flee 
On sidelong wing into a silent cove. 
Where ebon pines a shade under the 
starlight wove. 



15^ 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



CANTO IV. 



The old man took the oars, and soon 
the bark 
Smote on the beach beside a tower 
of stone; 
It was a crumbling heap whose portal 
dark 
With blooming ivy-trails was over- 
grown; 
Upon whose floor the spangling 
sands were strown, 
And rarest sea-shells, which the eter- 
nal flood. 
Slave to the mother of the months, 
had thrown 
"Within the walls of that gray tower, 
which stood 
A changeling of man's art nurst amid 
Nature's brood. 

II. 

When the old man his boat had 
anchored, 
He wound me in his arms with 
tender care, 
And very few but kindly words he 
said, 
And bore me through the tower 

adown a stair, 
Whose smooth descent some cease- 
less step to wear 
For many a year had fallen. — We 
came at last 
To a small chamber which with 
mosses rare 
Was tapestried, where me his soft 
hands placed 
Upon a couch of grass and oak-leaves 
interlaced. 

III. 

The moon was darting through the 
lattices 
Its yellow light, warm as the beams 
of day — 
So warm that, to admit the dewy 
breeze, 
The old man opened them; the 
moonlight lay 



Upon a lake whose waters wove ; 

their play j 

Even to the threshold of that lonely 

home: 

Within was seen in the dim waver- j 

ingray 

The antique sculptured roof, and many j 

a tome i 

Whose lore had made that sage all that i 

he had become. 

\ 
1 

IV. i 

The rock-built barrier of the sea was | 
past, — _ j 

And I was on the margin of a lake, ' 
A lonely lake, amid the forests vast j 
And snowy mountains: — did my I 
spirit wake j 

From sleep as many-colored as the j 
snake 
That girds eternity? in life and truth 
Might not my heart its cravings ever i 
slake? 
Was Cythna then a dream, and all my 
youth, 
And all its hopes and fears, and all its« 
joy and ruth? " 

V. 

Thus madness came again — a milder 
madness 
Which darkened naught but time's 
unquiet flow 
With supernatural shades of clinging 
sadness; 
That gentle Hermit, in my helpless 

woe. 
By my sick couch was busy to and 
fro. 
Like a strong spirit ministrant of good : 
When I was healed, he led me forth 
to show 
The wonders of his sylvan solitude. 
And we together sate by that isle-fretted 
flood. 



J 



VI. 



He knew his soothing words to weave 
with skill 
From all my madness told: like I 
mine own heart, 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



153 



Of Cythna would he question me, until 
That thrilling name had ceased to 

make me start, 
From his familiar lips — it was not 
art. 
Of wisdom and of justice when he 
spoke — 
When mid soft looks of pity there 
would dart 
A glance as keen as is the lightning's 
stroke 
When it doth rive the knots of some 
ancestral oak. 

VII. 

Thus slowly from my brain the dark- 
ness rolled; 
My thoughts their due array did 
reassume 
Through the enchantments of that 
Hermit old; 
Then I bethought me of the glorious 

doom 
Of those who sternly struggle to 
relume 
The lamp of Hope o'er man's bewil- 
dered lot; 
And, sitting by the waters in the 
gloom 
Of eve, to that friend's heart I told 
my thought — 
That heart which had grown old, but 
had corrupted not. 

VIII. 

That hoary man had spent his live- 
long age 
In converse with the dead who 
leave the stamp 
Of ever-burning thoughts on many a 
page, 
When they are gone into the sense- 
less damp 
Of graves : his spirit thus became a 
lamp 
Of splendor, like to those on which it 
fed: 
Through peopled haunts, the city 
and the camp. 
Deep thirst for knowledge had his 
footsteps led, 



And all the ways of men among mankind 
he read. 

IX. 

But custom maketh blind and obdurate 
The loftiest hearts: — he had beheld 
the woe 
In which mankind was bound, but 
deemed that fate 
Which made them abject would pre- 
serve them so; 
And in such faith, some steadfast 
joy to know. 
He sought this cell: but, when fame 
went abroad 
That one in Argolis did undergo 
Torture for liberty, and that the crowd 
High truths from gifted lips had heard 
and understood; 

X. 

And that the multitude was gathering 
wide. 
His spirit leaped within his aged 
frame, 
In lonely peace he could no more 
abide. 
But to the land on which the vic- 
tor's fiame 
Had fed, my native land, the Her- 
mit came : 
Each heart was there a shield, and 
every tongue 
Was as a sword, of truth — young 
Laon's name 
Rallied their secret hopes, though 
tyrants sung 
Hymns of triumphant joy our scattered 
tribes among. 

XI. 

He came to the lone column on the 

rock. 
And with his sweet and mighty 

eloquence 
The hearts of those who watched it 

did unlock. 
And made them melt in tears of 

penitence. 
They gave him entrance free to 

bear me thence. 



T54 THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 1 


** Since this," the old man .said, 


■1 
At voices which are heard about the ; 


" seven years are spent 


streets, i 


While slowly truth on thy benighted 


The ministers of fraud can scarce dis- ! 


sense 


semble ; 


Has crept ; the hope which wildered 


The lies of their own heart, — but, 1 


it has lent 


when one meets j 


Meanwhile to me the power of a sub- 


Another at the shrine, he inly weets, 


lime intent. 


Though he says nothing, that the truth ' 


XII. 


is known; ; 




Murderers are pale upon the judg- 


** Yes, from the records of my youth- 


ment-seats. 


ful state, 


And gold grows vile even to the , 


And from the lore of bards and 


wealthy crone, : 


sages old, 


And laughter fills the Fane, and curses 


From whatsoe'er my wakened thoughts 


shake the Throne. 


create 


j 


Out of the hopes of thine aspirings 


XV. 


bold. 




Have I collected language to un- 


" Kind thoughts, and mighty hopes, j 


fold 


and gentle deeds 


Truth to my countrymen; from shore 


Abound, for fearless love, and the 


to shore 


pure law i 


Doctrines of human power my 


Of mild equality and peace, succeeds i 


words have told, 


To faiths which long have held the , 


They have been heard, and men as- 


world in awe, \ 


pire to more 


Bloody and false and cold. — As 


Than they have ever gained or ever lost 


whirlpools draw \ 


of yore. 


All wrecks of ocean to their chasm, 




the sway 


XIII. 


Of thy strong genius, Laon, which j 


** In secret chambers parents read, and 
weep, 
My writings to their babes, no longer 
blind; 


foresaw 


This hope, compels all spirits to obey 


Which round thy secret strength now 
throng in wide array. 


And young men gather when their 




tyrants sleep. 


XVI. 


And vows of faith each to the other 




bind; 


" For I have been thy passive instru- 


And marriageable maidens, who 
have pined 


ment " — 


(As thus the old man spake, his 


r 

With love till life seemed melting 
through their look, 
A warmer zeal, a nobler hope, now 
find; 


countenance 


Gleamed on me like a spirit's)-^ 
"Thou hast lent 


To me, to all, the power to advance 


And every bosom thus is rapt and 
shook, 


Towards this unforeseen deliverance 
From our ancestral chains — ay, thou 


Like autumn's myriad leaves in one 
swoln mountain-brook. 


didst rear 


That lamp of hope on high which 




time nor chance 


XIV. 


Nor change may not extinguish, and 




my share 


"The tyrants of the Golden City 


Of good was o'er the world its gathered 


tremble 


beams to bear. 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



155 



XVII. 

** But I, alas ! am both unknown and 
old, 
And, though the woof of wisdom I 
know well 
To dye in hues of language, I am 
cold 
In seeming, and the hopes which 

inly dwell 
My manners note that I did long 
repel; 
But Laon's name to the tumultuous 
throng 
Were like the star whose beams the 
waves compel, 
And tempests, and his soul-subduing 
tongue 
Were as a lance to quell the mailed crest 
of wrong. 

XVIII. 

*• Perchance blood need not flow, if 
thou at length 
Wouldst rise, perchance the very 
slaves would spare 
Their brethren and themselves; great 
is the strength 
Of words — for lately did a maiden 

fair. 
Who from her childhood has been 
taught to bear 
The tyrant's heaviest yoke, arise, and 
make 
Her sex the law of truth and free- 
dom hear. 
And with these quiet words — ' For 
thine own sake, 
I prithee spare me' — did with ruth so 
take 

XIX. 

'* All hearts that even the torturer, 

who had bound 
Her meek calm frame, ere it was 

yet impaled. 
Loosened her, weeping then; nor 

could be found 
One human hand to harm her. — 

Unassailed 
Therefore she walks through the 

great City, veiled 



In virtue's adamantine eloquence, 
'Gainst scorn and death and pain 
thus trebly mailed, 
And blending, in the smiles of that 
defence. 
The serpent and the dove, wisdom and 
innocence. 

XX. 

"The wild-eyed women throng 
around her path: 
From their luxurious dungeons, 
from the dust 
Of meaner thralls, from the oppres- 
sor's wrath. 
Or the caresses of his sated lust, 
They congregate: in her they put 
their trust; 
The tyrants send their armed slaves 
to quell 
Her power; they, even like a 
thunder-gust 
Caught by some forest, bend beneath 
the spell 
Of that young maiden's speech, and to 
their chiefs rebel. 

XXI. 

"Thus she doth equal laws and jus- 
tice teach 
To woman, outraged and polluted 
long; 
Gathering the sweetest fruit in human 
reach 
For those fair hands now free, 

while armed wrong 
Trembles before her look, though it 
be strong; 
Thousands thus dwell beside her, 
virgins bright, 
And matrons with their babes, a 
stately throng ! 
Lovers renew the vows which they 
did plight 
In early faith, and hearts long parted 
now unite; 

XXII. 

" And homeless orphans find a home 
near her. 



iS6 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



And those poor victims of the 
proud, no less, 
Fair wrecks, on whom the smiling 
world, with stir. 
Thrusts the redemption of its 

wickedness: — 
In squalid huts and in its palaces 
Sits Lust alone, while o'er the land 
is borne 
Her voice, whose awful sweetness 
doth repress 
All evil, and her foes relenting turn, 
And cast the vote of love in hope's 
abandoned urn. 

XXIII. 

" So, in the populous City, a young 
maiden 
Has baffled Havoc of the prey 
which he 
Marks as his own whene'er, with 
chains o'erladen. 
Men make them arms to hurl down 

tyranny, — 
False arbiter between the bound 
and free; 
And o'er the land, in hamlets and in 
towns. 
The multitudes collect tumultuously. 
And throng in arms; but tyranny dis- 
owns 
Their claim, and gathers strength around 
its trembling thrones. 

XXIV. 

** Blood soon, although unwillingly, 
to shed 
The free cannot forbear — The 
Queen of Slaves, 
The hoodwinked Angel of the blind 
and dead, 
Custom, with iron mace points to 

the graves 
Where her own standard desolately 
waves 
Over the dust of Prophets and of Kings. 
Many yet stand in her array — ' she 
paves 
Her path with human hearts,' and 
o'er it flings 
The wildering gloom of her immeasur- 
able wings. 



XXV. 

" There is a plain beneath the City's 
wall. 
Bounded by misty mountains, wide 
and vast. 
Millions there lift at Freedom's thrill- 
ing call 
Ten thousand standards wide, they 

load the blast 
Which bears one sound of many 
voices past. 
And startles on his throne their 
sceptred foe : — 
He sits amid his idle pomp aghast, 
And that his power hath past away 
doth know — 
Why pause the victor swords to seal his 
overthrow ? 

XXVI. 

"The tyrant's guards resistance yet 
maintain : 
Fearless and fierce and hard as 
beasts of blood. 
They stand a speck amid the peopled 
plain; 
Carnage and ruin have been made 

their food 
From infancy — ill has become their 
good. 
And for its hateful sake their will has 
wove 
The chains which eat their hearts — 
the multitude. 
Surrounding them, with words of 
human love 
Seek from their own decay their stub- 
born minds to move. 



XXVII. 

" Over the land is felt a sudden pause, 

As night and day, those ruthless 

bands around. 

The watch of love is kept — a trance 

which awes 

The thoughts of men with hope — 

as, when the sound 
Of whirlwind whose fierce blasts 
the waves and clouds confound 
Dies suddenly, the mariner in fear 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



157 



Feels silence sink upon his heart — 
thus bound, 
The conquerors pause, and oh may 
freemen ne'er 
Clasp the relentless knees of Dread the 
murderer ! 

XXVIII. 

"If blood be shed, 'tis but a change 
and choice 
Of bonds — from slavery to coward- 
ice 
A wretched fall ! — Uplift thy charmed 
voice ! 
Pour on those evil men the love 

that lies 
Hovering within those spirit-sooth- 
ing eyes ! 
Arise, my friend, farewell ! " — As thus 
he spake. 
From the green earth lightly I did 
arise. 
As one out of dim dreams that doth 
awake. 
And looked upon the depth of that re- 
posing lake. 

XXIX. 

I saw my countenance reflected 
there; — 
And then my youth fell on me like 
a wind 
Descending on still waters — My thin 
hair 
Was prematurely gray, my face was 

lined 
With channels, such as suffering 
leaves behind, 
Not age; my brow was pale, but in 
my cheek 
I And lips a flush of gnawing fire did 

|(' find 

Their food and dwelling; though mine 
eyes might speak 
I A subtle mind and strong within a frame 
thus weak. 

I XXX. 

And though their lustre now was spent 
and faded, 



Yet in my hollow looks and withered 
mien 
The likeness of a shape for which was 
braided 
The brightest woof of genius still 

was seen — 
One who, methought, had gone from 
the world's scene, 
And left it vacant — 't was her lover's 
face — 
It might resemble her — it once had 
been 
The mirror of her thoughts, and still 

the grace 
Which her mind's shadow cast left there 
a lingering trace. 

XXXI. 

What then was I ? She slumbered with 
the dead. 
Glory and joy and peace had come 
and gone. 
Doth the cloud perish when the beams 
are fled 
Which steeped its skirts in gold? or, 

dark and lone. 
Doth it not through the paths of 
night, unknown. 
On outspread wings of its own wind 
upborne. 
Pour rain upon the earth? The stars 
are shown 
When the cold moon sharpens her 
silver horn 
Under the sea, and make the wide night 
not forlorn. 

XXXII. 

Strengthened in heart, yet sad, that 

aged man 
I left with interchange of looks and 

tears 
And lingering speech, and to the 

Camp began 
My way. O'er many a mountain- 
chain which rears 
Its hundred crests aloft, my spirit 

bears 
My frame; o'er many a dale and 

many a moor. 
And gayly now meseems serene earth 

wears 



158 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



The blosmy spring's star-bright in- 
vestiture, 
A vision which aught sad from sadness 
might allure. 

XXXIII. 

My powers revived within me, and I 
went, 
As one whom winds waft o'er the 
bending grass. 
Through many a vale of that broad 
continent. 
At night when I reposed, fair dreams 

did pass 
Before my pillow; my own Cythna 
was, 
Not like a child of death, among them 
ever; 
When I arose from rest, a woful 
mass 
That gentlest sleep seemed from mv 
life to sever. 
As if the light of youth were not with- 
drawn forever. 

XXXIV. 

Aye as I went, that maiden who had 
reared 
The torch of Truth afar, of whose 
high deeds 
The Hermit in his pilgrimage had 
heard. 
Haunted my thoughts. Ah, Hope 

its sickness feeds 
With whatsoe'er it finds, or flowers, 
or weeds ! — 
Could she be Cythna ? Was that corpse 
a shade 
Such as self-torturing thought from 
madness breeds ? 
Why was this hope not torture? Yet 
it made 
A light around my steps which would 
not ever fade. 



CANTO V. 

I. 

Over the utmost hill at length I sped, 
A snowy steep: — the moon was 
hanging low 



Over the Asian mountains, and, out- 
spread 
The plain, the City, and the Camp, 

below, 
Skirted the midnight ocean's glim- 
mering flow; 
The City's moon-lit spires and myriad 
lamps 
Like stars in a sublunar sky did glow. 
And fires blazed far amid the scattered 
camps, 
Like springs of flame which burst where'er 
swift Earthquake stamps. 



II. 

All slept but those in watchful arms 
who stood. 
And those who sate tending the 
beacon's light. 
And the few sounds from that vast 
multitude 
Made silence more profound. — Oh 

what a might 
Of human thought was cradled in i 
that night ! 
How many hearts impenetrably veiled 
Beat underneath its shade, what 
secret fight 
Evil and good, in woven passions 
mailed. 
Waged through that silent throng, — a 
war that never failed ! 



III. 



And now the Power of Good held 
victory, 
So, through the labyrinth of many a 
tent, 
Among the silent millions who did lie 
In innocent sleep, exultingly I went; 
The moon had left Heaven desert 
now, but, lent 
From eastern morn, the first f alHt lustre 
showed 
An armed youth; — over his spear he 

bent 
His downward face. — "A friend ! " 
I cried aloud, 
And quickly common hopes made free- i 
men understood. \ 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



159 



IV. 



I sate beside him while the morning 
beam 
Crept slowly over Heaven, and 
talked with him 
Of those immortal hopes, a glorious 
theme ! 
Which led us forth, until the stars 

grew dim: 
And all the while methought his 
voice did swim 
As if it drowned in remembrance were 
Of thoughts which make the moist 
eyes overbrim : 
At last, when daylight 'gan to fill the 
air, 
He looked on me, and cried in wonder, 
" Thou art here ! " 



V. 

Then, suddenly, I knew it was the 
youth 
In whom its earliest hopes my spirit 
found; 
But envious tongues had stained his 
spotless truth. 
And thoughtless pride his love in 

silence bound, 
And shame and sorrow mine in 
toils had wound, 
Whilst he was innocent, and I deluded; 
The truth now came upon me; on 
the ground 
Tears of repenting joy, which fast 
intruded. 
Fell fast, and o'er its peace our mingling 
spirits brooded. 

VI. 

Thus while with rapid lips and earnest 

eyes 

We talked, a sound of sweeping 

conflict, spread 

As from the earth, did suddenly arise; 

From every tent, roused by that 

clamor dread. 
Our bands outsprung, and seized 
their arms — We sped 
Towards the sound: our tribes were 
gathering far. 



Those sanguine slaves, amid ten 
thousand dead 
Stabbed in their sleep, trampled in 
treacherous war 
The gentle hearts whose power their 
lives had sought to spare. 

VII. 

Like rabid snakes that sting some 
gentle child 
Who brings them food when winter 
false and fair 
Allures them forth with its cold smiles, 
so wild 
They rage among the camp; — they 

overbear 
The patriot host — confusion, then 
despair 
Descends like night — when " Laon ! " 
one did cry : 
Like a bright ghost from Heaven, 
that shout did scare 
The slaves, and, widening through the 
vaulted sky, 
Seemed sent from Earth to Heaven in 
sign of victory. 

VIII. 

In sudden panic those false murderers 
fled. 
Like insect tribes before the northern 
gale: 
But, swifter still, our hosts encom- 
passed 
Their shattered ranks, and in a 

craggy vale. 
Where even their fierce despair 
might naught avail. 
Hemmed them around ! — And then 
revenge and fear 
Made the high virtue of the patriots 
fail: 
One pointed on his foe the mortal 
spear — 
I rushed before its point, and cried 
" Forbear, forbear ! " 

IX. 

The spear transfixed my arm that wag 
uplifted 
In swift expostulation, and the 
blood 



i6o 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



Gushed round its point: I smiled, 
and — "O thou gifted 
With eloquence which shall not be 

withstood, 
Flow thus ! " I cried in joy, " thou 
vital flood. 
Until my heart be dry, ere thus the 
cause 
For which thou wert aught worthy 
be subdued ! — 
- Ah ! ye are pale, — ye weep, — your 

passions pause, — 
'T is well! ye feel the truth of love's 
benignant laws. 



** Soldiers, our brethren and our friends 
are slain: 
Ye murdered them, I think, as they 
did sleep ! 
Alas ! what have ye done ? The slight- 
est pain 
Which ye might suffer, there were 

eyes to weep, 
But ye have quenched them — there 
were smiles to steep 
Your hearts in balm, but they are lost 
in woe; 
And those whom love did set his 
watch to keep 
Around your tents, truth's freedom to 
bestow. 
Ye stabbed as they did sleep — but 
they forgive ye now. 

XI. 

" Oh wherefore should ill ever flow 
from ill, 
And pain still keener pain forever 
breed? 
We all are brethren — even the slaves 
who kill 
For hire are men; and to avenge 

misdeed 
On the misdoer doth but Misery 
feed 
With her own broken heart ! O Earth, 
O Heaven ! 
And thou, dread Nature, which to 
every deed, 
And all that lives or is, to be hath 
given, 



Even as to thee have these done ill, 
and are forgiven ! 

XII. 

"Join then your hands and hearts, 
and let the past 
Be as a grave, which gives not up 
its dead. 
To evil thoughts." — A film then over- 
cast 
My sense with dimness, for the 

wound, which bled 
Freshly, swift shadows o'er mine 
eyes had shed. 
When I awoke, I lay mid friends and 
foes. 
And earnest countenances on me 
shed 
The light of questioning looks, whilst 
one did close 
My wound with balmiest herbs, and 
soothed me to repose. 

XIII. 

And one, whose spear had pierced me, 
leaned beside. 
With quivering lips and humid 
eyes; — and all 
Seemed like some brothers on a 
journey wide 
Gone forth, whom now strange 

meeting did befal 
In a strange land round one whom 
they might call 
Their friend, their chief, their father, 
for assay 
Of peril, which had saved them 
from the thrall 
Of death, now suffering. Thus the 
vast array 
Of those fraternal bands were recon- 
ciled that day. 

XIV. 

Lifting the thunder of their acclamation 
Towards the City, then the multi- 
tude. 
And I among them, went in joy — a 

nation 
Made free by love, a mighty brother- 
hood 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM, 



i6i 



Linkt by a jealous interchange of 
good; 
A glorious pageant, more magnificent 
Than kingly slaves arrayed in gold 
and blood, 
When they return from carnage, and 
are sent 
In triumph bright beneath the populous 
battlement. 

XV. 

Afar, the City-walls were thronged on 
high, 
And myriads on each giddy turret 
clung, 
And to each spire far lessening in the 
sky 
Bright pennons on the idle winds 

were hung; 
As we approached, a shout of joy- 
ance sprung 
At once from all the crowd, as if the 
vast 
And peopled Earth its boundless 
skies among 
The sudden clamor of delight had cast. 
When from before its face some general 
wreck had past. 

XVI. 

Our armies through the City's hundred 
gates 
Were poured, like brooks which to 
the rocky lair 
Of some deep lake, whose silence them 
awaits, 
Throng from the mountains when 

the storms are there : 
And, as we past through the calm 
sunny air, 
A thousand fiower-inwoven crowns 
were shed. 
The token-flowers of truth and free- 
dom fair, 
And fairest hands bound them on many 
a head, 
Those angels of love's heaven that over 
all was spread. 

XVII. 

I trod as one tranced in some raptur- 
ous vision : 



Those bloody bands so lately recon- 
ciled 
Were, ever as they went, by the con- 
trition 
Of anger turned to love, from ill 

beguiled. 
And every one on them more gently 
smiled 
Because they had done evil : — the 
sweet awe 
Of such mild looks made their own 
hearts grow mild. 
And did with soft attraction ever draw 
Their spirits to the love of freedom's 
equal law. 

XVIII. 

And they and all in one loud sym- 
phony 
My name with Liberty commingling 
lifted, 
"The friend and the preserver of the 
free ! 
The parent of this joy!" and fair 

eyes, gifted 
With feelings caught from one who 
had uplifted 
The light of a great spirit, round me 
shone; 
And all the shapes of this grand 
scenery shifted 
Like restless clouds before the steadfast 
sun, — 
Where was that Maid? I asked, but it 
was known of none. 

XIX. 

Laone was the name her love had 
chosen. 
For she was nameless, and her birth 
none knew : 
Where was Laone now? — The words 
were frozen 
Within my lips with fear; but to 

subdue 
Such dreadful hope to my great task 
was due, 
And when at length one brought reply 
that she 
To-morrow would appear, I then 
withdrew 



1 62 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



To judge what need for that great 
throng might be, 
For now the stars came thick over the 
twilight sea. 



XX. 



Yet need was none for rest or food to 
care, 
Even though that multitude was 
passing great. 
Since each one for the other did pre- 
pare 
All kindly succor. — Therefore to the 

gate 
Of the Imperial House, now deso- 
late, 
I past, and there was found aghast, 
alone, 
The fallen Tyrant. — Silently he sate 
Upon the footstool of his golden throne, 
Which, starred with sunny gems, in its 
own lustre shone. 

XXI. 

Alone, but for one child who led before 
him 
A graceful dance : the only living 
thing 
Of all the crowd which thither to 
adore him 
Flocked yesterday, who solace 

sought to bring 
In his abandonment ! — She knew 
the King 
Had praised her dance of yore; and 
now she wove 
Its circles, aye weeping and mur- 
muring, 
Mid her sad task of unregarded love, 
That to no smiles it might his speechless 
sadness move. 

XXII. 

She fled to him, and wildly claspt his 

feet, 
When human steps were heard : — 

he moved nor spoke. 
Nor changed his hue, nor raised his 

looks to meet 



The gaze of strangers — Our loud 

entrance woke 
The echoes of the hall, which cir- 
cling broke 
The calm of its recesses ; — like a tomb, 
Its sculptured walls vacantly to the 
stroke 
Of footfalls answered, and the twi- 
light's gloom 
Lay like a charnel's mist within the 
radiant dome. 

XXIII. 

The little child stood up when we 
came nigh; 
Her lips and cheeks seemed very 
pale and wan, 
But on her forehead and within her 
eye 
Lay beauty which makes hearts that 

feed thereon 
Sick with excess of sweetness; on 
the throne 
She leaned; — the King, with gath- 
ered brow and lips 
Wreathed by long scorn, did inly 
sneer and frown. 
With hue like that when some great 
painter dips 
His pencil in the gloom of earthquake 
and eclipse. 

XXIV. 

She stood beside him like a rainbow 
braided 
Within some storm when scarce its 
shadows vast 
From the blue paths of the swift sun 
have faded; 
A sweet and solemn smile, like 

Cythna's, cast 
One moment's light, which made 
my heart beat fast. 
O'er that child's parted lips — a gleam 
of bliss, 
A shade of vanisht days, — as the 
tears past 
Which wrapt it, even as with a father's 
kiss 
I prest those softest eyes in trembling 
tenderness. 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



163 



XXV. 

The sceptred wretch then from that 
solitude 
I drew, and, of his change com- 
passionate, 
With words of sadness soothed his 
rugged mood. 
But he, while pride and fear held 

deep debate, 
With sullen guile of ill-dissembled 
hate 
Glared on me as a toothless snake 
might glare : 
Pity, not scorn, I felt though des- 
olate 
The desolater now, and unaware 
The curses which he mockt had caught 
him by the hair. 

XXVI. 

I led him forth from that which now 
might seem 
A gorgeous grave : through portals 
sculptured deep 
With imagery beautiful as dream 
We went, and left the shades which 

tend on sleep 
Over its unregarded gold to keep 
Their silent watch. — The child trod 
faintingly. 
And, as she went, the tears which 
she did weep 
Glanced in the starlight; wildered 
seemed she. 
And, when I spake, for sobs she could 
not answer me. 

XXVII. 

At last the Tyrant cried, " She hun- 
gers, slave, 
Stab her, or give her bread!" — It 
was a tone 
Such as sick fancies in a new-made 
grave 
Might hear. I trembled, for the 

truth was known : 
He with this child had thus been 
left alone. 
And neither had gone forth for food, 
— but he. 



In mingled pride and awe, cowered 
near his throne. 
And she, a nursling of captivity. 
Knew naught beyond those walls, nor 
what such change might be. 

XXVIII. 

And he was troubled at a charm with- 
drawn 
Thus suddenly; that sceptres ruled 
no more — 
That even from gold the dreadful 
strength was gone 
Which once made all things subject 

to its power — 
Such wonder seized him as if hour 
by hour 
The past had come again; and the 
swift fall 
Of one so great and terrible of yore 
To desolateness in the hearts of all 
Like wonder stirred who saw such awful 
change befal. 

XXIX. 

A mighty crowd, such as the wide 
land pours 
Once in a thousand years, now 
gathered round 
The fallen Tyrant; — like the rush of 
showers 
Of hail in spring, pattering along 

the ground, 
Their many footsteps fell — else 
came no sound 
From the wide multitude; that 
lonely man 
Then knew the burden of his 
change, and found. 
Concealing in the dust his visage wan. 
Refuge from the keen looks which 
through his bosom ran. 

XXX. 

And he was faint withal: I sate 

beside him 
Upon the earth, and took that 

child so fair 
From his weak arms, that ill might 

none betide him 



1 64 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



Or her; — when food was brought 

to them, her share 
To his averted lipi the child did 
bear, 
But, v/hen she saw he had enough, 
she ate. 
And wept the while; — the lonely 
man's despair 
Hunger then overcame, and, of his 
state 
Forgetful, on the dust as in a trance he 
sate. 

XXXI. 

Slowly the silence of the multitudes 
Past, as when far is heard in some 
lone dell 
The gathering of a wind among the 
woods — 
*' And he is fallen!" they cry; 

" he who did dwell 
Like famine or the plague, or aught 
more fell, 
Among our homes, is fallen ! the 
murderer 
Who slaked his thirsting soul, as 
from a well 
Of blood and tears, with ruin ! he is 
here ! 
Sunk in a gulf of scorn from which none 
may him rear !" 

XXXII. 

Then was heard — "He who judged, 
let him be brought 
To judgment ! Blood for blood 
cries from the soil 
On which his crimes have deep pollu- 
tion wrought ! 
Shall Othman only unavenged de- 
spoil ? 
Shall they who by the stress of 
grinding toil 
Wrest from the unwilling earth his 
luxuries 
Perish for crime, while his foul 
blood may boil 
Or creep within his veins at will? — 
Arise, 
And to high Justice make her chosen 
sacrifice." 



XXXIII. 

*' What do ye seek? what fear ye," 
then I cried. 
Suddenly starting forth, "that ye 
should shed 
The blood of Othman? — if your 
hearts are tried 
In the true love of freedom, cease 

to dread 
This one poor lonely man — be- 
neath Heaven spread 
In purest light above us all, through 
Earth, 
Maternal Earth, who doth her sweet 
smiles shed 
For all, — let him go free; until the 
worth 
Of human nature win from these a 
second birth. 

XXXIV. 

" What call ye y^^j/zV^ .'' Is there one 
who ne'er 
In secret thought has wisht another's 
ill? — 
Are ye all pure? Let those stand 
forth who hear 
And tremble not. Shall they insult 

and kill. 
If such they be? their mild eyes 
can they fill 
With the false anger of the hypocrite ? 
Alas, such were not pure, — the 
chastened will 
Of virtue sees that justice is the light 
Of love, and not revenge and terror 
and despite." 

XXXV. 

The murmur of the people, slowly 
dying. 
Paused as I spake, then those who 
near me were 
Cast gentle looks where the lone man 
was lying 
Shrouding his head, which now that 

infant fair 
Claspt on her lap in silence; — 
through the air 
Sobs were then heard, and many 
kist my feet 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



165 



In pity's madness, and to the de- 
spair 
Of him whom late they curst a solace 
sweet 
His very victims brought — soft looks 
and speeches meet. 

XXXVI. 

Then to a home for his repose assigned, 
Accompanied by the still throng, 
he went 
In silence, where, to soothe his rank- 
ling mind. 
Some likeness of his ancient state 

was lent; 
And, if his heart could have been 
innocent 
As those who pardoned him, he might 
have ended 
His days in peace; but his straight 
lips were bent, 
Men said, into a smile which guile 
portended, 
A sight with which that child like hope 
with fear was blended. 

XXXVII. 

'Twas midnight now, the eve of that 
great day 
Whereon the many nations at whose 
call 
The chains of earth like mist melted 
away 
Decreed to hold a sacred Festival, 
A rite to attest the equality of all 
Who live. So to their homes, to 
dream or wake. 
All went. The sleepless silence did 
recall 
Laone to my thoughts, with hopes 
that make 
The flood recede from which their thirst 
they seek to slake. 

XXXVIII. 

The dawn flowed forth, and from its 
purple fountains 
I drank those hopes which make 
the spirit quail, 



As to the plain between the misty 
mountains 
And the great City, with a counte- 
nance pale, 
I went: — it was a sight which 
might avail 
To make men weep exulting tears, 
for whom 
Now first from human power the 
reverent veil 
Was torn, to see Earth from her 
general womb 
Pour forth her swarming sons to a 
fraternal doom; 

XXXIX. 

To see far glancing in the misty morn- 
ing 
The signs of that innumerable host. 
To hear one sound of many made, the 
warning 
Of Earth to Heaven from its free 

children tost; 
WRile the eternal hills, and the sea 
lost 
In wavering light, and, starring the 
blue sky, 
The City's myriad spires of gold, 
almost 
With human joy made mute society — 
Its witnesses with men who must here- 
after be; 

XL. 

To see, like some vast island from the 
ocean. 
The Altar of the Federation rear 
Its pile i' the midst, — a work which 
the devotion 
Of millions in one night created 

there. 
Sudden as when the moonrise makes 
appear 
Strange clouds in the east; a marble 
pyramid 
Distinct with steps: that mighty 
shape did wear 
The light of genius; its still shadow 
hid 
Far ships : to know its height the morn- 
ing mists forbid ! 



i66 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



XLI. 

To hear the restless multitudes for- 
ever 
Around the base of that great Altar 
flow, 
As on some mountain-islet burst and 
shiver 
Atlantic waves; and solemnly and 

slow, 
As the wind bore that tumult to and 
fro, 
To feel the dreamlike music, which 
did swim 
Like beams through floating clouds 
on waves below. 
Falling in pauses from that Altar dim, 
As silver-sounding tongues breathed an 
aerial hymn. 

XLII. 

To hear, to see, to live, was on that 
morn 
Lethean joy ! so that all those 
assembled 
Cast off their memories of the past 
outworn; 
Two only bosoms with their own 

life trembled. 
And mine was one — and we had 
both dissembled; 
So with a beating heart I went, and 
one 
Who, having much, covets yet more, 
resembled, — 
A lost and dear possession, which not 
won. 
He walks in lonely gloom beneath the 
noonday sun. 

XLIII. 

To the great Pyramid I came: its 

stair 
With female choirs was thronged, 

the loveliest 
Among the free, grouped with its 

sculptures rare; 
As I approached, the morning's 

golden mist. 
Which now the wonder-stricken 

breezes kist 



With their cold lips, fled, and the 
summit shone 
Like Athos seen from Samothracia, 
drest 
In earliest light, by vintagers, and one 
Sate there, a female Shape upon an 
ivory throne : 

XLIV. 

A Form most like the imagined habi- 
tant 
Of silver exhalations sprung from 
dawn, 
By winds which feed on sunrise woven, 
to enchant 
The faiths of men : all mortal eyes 

were drawn — 
As famished mariners, through 
strange seas gone, 
Gaze on a burning watch-tower — by 
the light 
Of those divinest lineaments. Alone 
With thoughts which none could share, 
from that fair sight 
I turned in sickness, for a veil shrouded 
her countenance bright. 

XLV. 

And neither did I hear the acclama- 
tions 
Which, from brief silence bursting, 
filled the air 
With her strange name and mine, 
from all the nations 
Which we, they said, in strength 

had gathered there 
From the sleep of bondage; nor the 
vision fair 
Of that bright pageantry beheld, — 
but blind 
And silent as a breathing corpse did 
fare. 
Leaning upon my friend, till, like a 
wind 
To fevered cheeks, a voice flowed o'er 
my troubled mind. 

XLVI. 

Like music of some minstrel heavenly- 
gifted 
To one whom fiends enthral, this 
voice to me; 



THE REVOLT OE ISLAM. 



167 



Scarce did I wish her veil to be up- 
lifted, 
I was so calm and joyous. — I could 

see 
The platform where we stood, the 
statues three 
Which kept their marble watch on 
that high shrine, 
The multitudes, the mountains, and 
the sea; 
As, when eclipse hath past, things 
sudden shine 
To men's astonished eyes most clear and 
crystalline. 

XLVII. 

At first Laone spoke most tremulously : 

But soon her voice the calmness 

which it shed 

Gathered, and — "Thou art whom I 

sought to see. 

And thou art our first votary here," 

she said. 
" I had a dear friend once, but he is 
dead ! — 
And of all those on the wide earth 
who breathe. 
Thou dost resemble him alone. — I 
spread 
This veil between us two, that thou 
beneath 
Shouldst image one who may have been 
long lost in death. 

XLVIII. 

'* For this wilt thou not henceforth 

pardon me? 
Yes, but those joys which silence 
well requite 
Forbid reply; why men have chosen 
me 
To be the Priestess of this holiest 

rite 
I scarcely know, but that the floods 
of light 
Which flow over the world have borne 
me hither 
To meet thee, long most dear; and 
now unite 
Thine hand with mine, and may all 
comfort wither 



From both the hearts whose pulse in joy 
now beat together. 

XLIX. 

"If our own will as others' law we 
bind. 
If the foul worship trampled here 
we fear, 
If as ourselves we cease to love our 
kind!" — 
She paused, and pointed upwards — 

sculptured there 
Three shapes around her ivory 
throne appear : 
One was a Giant, like a child asleep 
On a loose rock, whose grasp 
crusht, as it were 
In dream, sceptres and crowns; and 
one did keep 
Its watchful eyes in doubt whether to 
smile or weep; 

L. 

A Woman sitting on the sculptured 
disk 
Of the broad earth, and feeding 
from one breast 
A human babe and a young basilisk; 
Her looks were sweet as Heaven's 

when loveliest 
In autumn eves. The third Image 
was drest 
In white wings swift as clouds in 
winter skies; 
Beneath his feet, 'mongst ghastliest 
forms, represt 
Lay Faith, an obscene worm, who 
sought to rise. 
While calmly on the Sun he turned his 
diamond eyes. 

LI. 

Beside that Image then I sate, while 
she 
Stood mid the throngs which ever 
ebbed and flowed. 
Like light amid the shadows of the 
sea 
Cast from one cloudless star, and on 
the crowd 



i68 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



That touch which none who feels 
forgets bestowed; 
And whilst the sun returned the stead- 
fast gaze 
Of the great Image, as o'er Heaven 
it glode, 
That rite had place; it ceased when 
sunset's blaze 
Burned o'er the isles. All stood in joy 
and deep amaze, 
When in the silence of all spirits there 
Laone's voice was felt, and through 
the air 
Her thrilling gestures spoke, most elo- 
quently fair. 



"Calm art thou as yon sunset! swift 

and strong 
As new-fledged eagles, beautiful and 

young. 
That float among the blinding beams 
of morning: 
And underneath thy feet writhe 

Faith and Folly, 
Custom and Hell and mortal Melan- 
choly. — 
Hark ! the Earth starts to hear the 
mighty warning 
Of thy voice sublime and holy; 
Its free spirits here assembled, 
See thee, feel thee, know thee 
now,-- 
To thy voice their hearts have 
trembled. 
Like ten thousand clouds which 
flow 
With one wide wind as it flies ! 
Wisdom ! thy irresistible children rise 
To hail thee; and the elements they 
chain. 
And their own will, to swell the glory of 
thy train. 



2. 



** O Spirit vast and deep as Night and 

Heaven ! 
Mother and soul of all to which is 

given 
The light of life, the loveliness of being, 
Lo ! thou dost reascend the human 

heart, 



Thy throne of power, almighty as 
thou wert 
In dreams of Poets old grown pale by 
seeing 

The shade of thee : — now mil- 
lions start 
To feel thy lightnings through 
them burning : 
Nature, or God, or Love, or 
Pleasure, 
Or Sympathy, the sad tears turn- 
ing 
To mutual smiles, a drainless 
treasure. 
Descends amidst us; — Scorn and 
Hate, 
Revenge and Selfishness, are deso- 
late — 
A hundred nations swear that there 
shall be 
Pity and Peace and Love among the 
good and free ! 



"Eldest of things, divine Equality! 
Wisdom and Love are but the slaves 

of thee. 
The Angels of thy sway, who pour 
around thee 
Treasures from all the cells of human 

thought 
And from the stars and from the 
ocean brought, 
And the last living heart whose beat- 
ings bound thee : 
The powerful and the wise had 

sought 
Thy coming; thou, in light de- 
scending 
O'er the wide land which is 
thine own, 
Like the Spring whose breath is 
blending 
All blasts of fragrance into one, 
Comest upon the paths of men ! 
Earth bares her general bosom to thy 

ken. 
And all her children here in glory 
meet 
To feed upon thy smiles, and clasp thy 
sacred feet. 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



169 



'* My brethren, we are free ! The 

plains and mountains, 
The gray sea-shore, the forests, and 

the fountains, 
Are haunts of happiest dwellers; man 
and woman. 
Their common bondage burst, may 

freely borrow 
From lawless love a solace for their 
sorrow — 
For oft we still must weep, since we 
are human. 
A stormy night's serenest mor- 
row — 
Whose showers are Pity's gentle 
tears, 
Whose clouds are smiles of those 
that die 
Like infants without hopes or 
fears, 
And whose beams are joys that 
lie 
In blended hearts — now holds 
dominion : 
The dawn of mind, which, upwards on 

a pinion 
Borne swift as sun-rise, far illumines 
space. 
And clasps this barren world in its own 
bright embrace ! 



" My brethren, we are free ! The 

fruits are glowing 
Beneath the stars, and the night-winds 

are flowing 
O'er the ripe corn, the birds and beasts 
are dreaming — 
Never again may blood of bird or 

beast 
Stain with its venomous stream a 
human feast. 
To the pure skies in accusation steam- 
ing; 
Avenging poisons shall have 

ceased 
To feed disease and fear and mad- 
ness; 
The dwellers of the earth and 
air 



Shall throng around our steps in 
gladness, 
Seeking their food or refuge 
there. 
Our toil from thought all glorious 

forms shall cull, 
To make this Earth, our home, more 

beautiful; 
And Science, and her sister Poesy, 
Shall clothe in light the fields and cities 
of the free ! 



6. 



"Victory, victory to the prostrate 

nations ! 
Bear witness. Night, and ye mute Con- 
stellations 
Who gaze on us from your crystalline 
cars ! 
Thoughts have gone forth whose 

powers can sleep no more ! 
Victory! Victory! Earth's remotest 
shore. 
Regions which groan beneath the ant- 
arctic stars, 
The green lands cradled in the 

roar 
Of western waves, and wilder- 
nesses 
Peopled and vast which skirt the 
oceans 
Where Morning dyes her golden 
tresses, 
Shall soon partake our high 
emotions : 
Kings shall turn pale ! Almighty 
Fear, 
The Fiend-God, when our charmed 

name he hear. 
Shall fade like shadow from his thou- 
sand fanes. 
While Truth, with Joy enthroned, o'er 
his lost empire reigns ! " 

LII. 

Ere she had ceased, the mists of night, 

entwining 
Their dim woof, floated o'er the 

infinite throng; 
She, like a spirit through the darkness 

shining, 



170 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



In tones whose sweetness silence did 

prolong 
As if to lingering winds they did be- 
long, 
Poured forth her inmost soul : a pas- 
sionate speech 
With wild and thrilling pauses woven 
among, 
Which whoso heard was mute, for it 
could teach 
To rapture like her own all listening 
hearts to reach. 

LIII. 

Her voice was as a mountain-stream 
which sweeps 
The withered leaves of autumn to 
the lake. 
And in some deep and narrow bay 
then sleeps 
In the shadow of the shores; as 

dead leaves wake, 
Under the wave, in flowers and herbs 
which make 
Those green depths beautiful when 
skies are blue, 
The multitude so moveless did par- 
take 
Such living change, and kindling mur- 
murs flew 
As o'er that speechless calm delight and 
wonder grew. 

Liv, 

Over the plain the throngs were scat- 
tered then 
In groups around the fires, which 
from the sea 
Even to the gorge of the first moun- 
tain-glen 
Blazed wide and far: the banquet of 

the free 
Was spread beneath many a dark 
cypress-tree. 
Beneath whose spires which swayed 
in the red flame 
Reclining as they ate, of Liberty 
And Hope and Justice and Laone's 
name 
Earth's children did a woof of happy 
converse frame. 



LV. 

Their feast was such as Earth the 
general mother 
Pours from her fairest bosom, when 
she smiles 
In the embrace of Autumn; to each 
other 
As when some parent fondly rec- 
onciles 
Her warring children, she their 
wrath beguiles 
With her own sustenance ; they relent- 
ing weep : — 
Such was this Festival, which, from 
their isles 
And continents and winds and ocean's 
deep. 
All shapes might throng to share that 
fly or walk or creep, — 

LVI. 

Might share in peace and innocence: 
for gore 
Or poison none this festal did pol^ 
lute. 
But, piled on high, an overflowing 
store 
Of pomegranates and citrons, fairest 

fruit. 
Melons and dates and figs, and many 
a root 
Sweet and sustaining, and bright 
grapes ere yet 
Accursed fire their mild juice could 
transmute 
Into a mortal bane, and brown corn set 
In baskets; with pure streams their 
thirsting lips they wet. 

LVI I. 

Laone had descended from the shrine, 

And every deepest look and holiest 

mind 

Fed on her form, though now those 

tones divine 

Were silent, as she past; she did 

unwind 
Her veil, as with the crowds of her 
own kind 
She mixt; some impulse made my 
heart refrain 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



171 



From seeking her that night, so I 
reclined 
Amidst a group, where on the utmost 
plain 
A festal watchfire burned beside the 
dusky main. 

LVIII. 

And joyous was our feast; pathetic 
talk, 
And wit, and harmony of choral 
strains. 
While far Orion o'er the waves did 
walk 
That fiow among the isles, held us 

in chains 
Of sweet captivity which none dis- 
dains 
Who feels : but, when his zone grew 
dim in mist 
Which clothes the Ocean's bosom, 
o'er the plains 
The multitudes went homeward to 
their rest, 
Which that delightful day with its own 
shadow blest. 



CANTO VI. 
I. 

Beside the dimness of the glimmering 
sea. 
Weaving swift language from im- 
passioned themes, 
With that dear friend I lingered who 
to me 
So late had been restored, beneath 

the gleams 
Of the silver stars ; and ever in soft 
dreams 
Of future love and peace sweet con- 
verse lapt 
Our willing fancies, till the pallid 
beams 
Of the last watch-fire fell, and dark- 
ness wrapt 
The waves, and each bright chain of 
floating fire was snapt ; 



II. 

And till we came even to the City's 
wall 
And the great gate. Then, none 
knew whence or why. 
Disquiet on the multitudes did fall : 
And first, one pale and breathless 

passed us by. 
And stared and spoke not ; then 
with piercing cry 
A troop of wild-eyed women, by the 
shrieks 
Of their own terror driven, — tumul- 
tuously 
Hither and thither hurrying with pale 
cheeks. 
Each one from fear unknown a sudden 
refuge seeks — 

III. 

Then, rallying cries of treason and of 
danger 
Resounded : and — " They come ! 
to arms ! to arms ! 
The Tyrant is amongst us, and the 
stranger 
Comes to enslave us in his name ! 

to arms ! ' ' 
In vain: for Panic, the pale fiend 
who charms 
Strength to forswear her right, those 
millions swept 
Like waves before the tempest — 
these alarms 
Came to me, as to know their cause 
I leapt 
On the gate's turret, and in rage and 
grief and scorn I wept ! 



IV. 



For to the north I saw the town on 

fire. 
And its red light made morning 

pallid now, 
Which burst over wide Asia ; — louder, 

higher. 
The yells of victory and the screams 

of woe 
I heard approach, and saw the 

throng below 



172 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



Stream through the gates like foam- 
wrought waterfalls 
Fed from a thousand storms — the 
fearful glow 
Of bombs flares overhead — at in- 
tervals 
The red artillery's bolt mangling among 
them falls. 



And now the horsemen come — and 
all was done 
Swifter than I have spoken — I 
beheld 
Their red swords flash in the unrisen 
sun. 
I rusht among the rout, to have 

repelled 
That miserable flight, — one mo- 
ment quelled 
By voice and looks and eloquent de- 
spair, 
As if reproach from their own 
hearts withheld 
Their steps, they stood ; but soon 
came pouring there 
New multitudes, and did those rallied 
bands o'erbear. 

VI. 

I strove, as, drifted on some cataract 
By irresistible streams, some wretch 
might strive 
Who hears its fatal roar: the files 
compact 
Whelmed me, and from the gate 

availed to drive 
With quickening impulse, as each 
bolt did rive 
Their ranks with bloodier chasm : into 
the plain 
Disgorged at length the dead and 
the alive. 
In one dread mass, were parted, and 
the stain 
Of blood from mortal steel fell o'er the 
fields like rain. 

VII. 

For now the despot's bloodhounds, 
with their prey 



Unarmed and unaware, were gor- 
ging deep 
Their gluttony of death; the loose 
array 
Of horsemen o'er the wide fields 

murdering sweep, 
And with loud laughter for their 
tyrant reap 
A harvest sown with other hopes, the 
while. 
Far overhead, ships from Propontis 
keep 
A killing rain of tire : — when the 
waves smile, 
As sudden earthquakes light many a vol- 
cano-isle. 

VIII. 

Thus sudden, unexpected feast was 
spread 
For the carrion-fowls of Heaven. — 
I saw the sight — 
I moved — I lived — as o'er the heaps 
of dead, 
Whose stony eyes glared in the 

morning light, 
I trod; — to me there came no 
thought of flight, 
But with loud cries of scorn, which 
whoso heard 
That dreaded death felt in his veins 
the might 
Of virtuous shame return, the crowd I 
stirred. 
And desperation's hope in many hearts 
recurred. 

IX. 

A band of brothers gathering round 
me made. 
Although unarmed, a steadfast front, 
and, still 
Retreating, with stern looks beneath 
the shade 
Of gathering eyebrows, did the vic- 
tors fill 
With doubt even in success; delib- 
erate will 
Inspired our growing troops; not over- 
thrown, 
It gained the shelter of a grassy hill, 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



173 



And ever still our comrades were 
hewn down, 
And their defenceless limbs beneath our 
footsteps strown. 

X. 

Immovably we stood — in joy I found 

Beside me then, firm as a giant pine 

Among the mountain-vapors driven 

around, 

The old man whom I loved — his 

eyes divine 
With a mild look of courage an- 
swered mine; 
And my young friend was near, and 
ardently 
His hand grasped mine a moment ; — 
now the line 
Of war extended to our rallying cry 
As myriads flockt in love and brother- 
hood to die. 

XI. 

For ever while the sun was climbing 
Heaven 
The horseman hewed our unarmed 
myriads down 
Safely, though, when by thirst of 
carnage driven 
Too near, those slaves were swiftly 

overthrown 
By hundreds leaping on them : — 
flesh and bone 
Soon made our ghastly ramparts; then 
the shaft 
Of the artillery from the sea was 
thrown 
More fast and fiery, and the con- 
querors laught 
In pride to hear the wind our screams 
of torment waft. 

XII. 

For on one side alone the hill gave 
shelter. 
So vast that phalanx of unconquered 
men, 
And there the living in the blood did 
welter 
Of the dead and dying, which in 
that green glen, 



Like stifled torrents, made a plashy 
fen 
Under the feet — thus was the butchery 
waged 
While the sun clomb Heaven's east- 
ern steep: but, when 
It 'gan to sink, a fiercer combat raged, 
For in more doubtful strife the armies 
were engaged. 

XIII. 

Within a cave upon a hill were found 
A bundle of rude pikes, the instru- 
ment 
Of those who war but on their native 
ground 
For natural rights : a shout of joy- 

ance, sent 
Even from our hearts, the wide air 
pierced and rent, 
As those few arms the bravest and the 
best 
Seized, and each sixth, thus armed, 
did now present 
A line which covered and sustained the 
rest, 
A confident phalanx which the foe on 
every side invest. 

XIV. 

That onset turned the foes to flight 
almost ; 
But soon they saw their present 
strength, and knew 
That coming night would to our reso- 
lute host 
Bring victory; so, dismounting, close 

they drew 
Their glittering files, and then the 
combat grew 
Unequal but most horrible; — and ever 
Our myriads, whom the swift bolt 
overthrew, 
Or the red sword, failed like a moun- 
tain-river 
Which rushes forth in foam to sink in 
sands forever. 

XV. 

Sorrow and shame to see with their 
own kind 



174 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



Our human brethren mix, like beasts 


While carnage in the sunbeam's warmth 


of blood, 


did seethe. 


To mutual ruin, armed by one behind 


Till Twilight o'er the east wove her 


Who sits and scoffs ! — That friend 


serenest wreath. 


so mild and good, 




Who like its shadow near my youth 


XVIII. 


had stood. 




Was stabbed! — my old preserver's 


The few who yet survived, resolute 


hoary hair. 


and firm. 


With the flesh clinging to its roots, 


Around me fought. At the decline 


was strewed 


of day. 


Under my feet ! I lost all sense or 


Winding above the mountain's snowy 


care, 


term, 


And like the rest I grew desperate and 


New banners shone : they quivered 


unaware. 


in the ray 




Of the sun's unseen orb — ere night 


XVI. 


the array 




Of fresh troops hemmed us in — of 


The battle became ghastlier; — in the 


those brave bands 


midst 


I soon survived alone — and now I 


I paused, and saw how ugly and how 


lay 


fell, 


Vanquisht and faint, the grasp of 


O Hate ! thou art, even when thy life 


bloody hands 


thou shedd'st 


I felt, and saw on high the glare of fall- 


For Love. The ground in many a 


ing brands, 


little dell 




Was broken, up and down whose 


XIX. 


steeps befell 




Alternate victory and defeat ; and 


When on my foes a sudden terror 


there 


came, 


The combatants with rage most 


And they fled, scattering. — Lo ! 


horrible 


with reinless speed 


Strove, and their eyes started with 


A black Tartarian horse of giant frame 


cracking stare, 


Comes trampling o'er the dead; the 


And impotent their tongues they lolled 


living bleed 


into the air, — 


Beneath the hoofs of that tremen- 




dous steed, 


XVII. 


On which, like to an Angel, robed in 




white. 


Flaccid and foamy, like a mad dog's 


Sate one waving a sword; — the 


hanging. 


hosts recede 


Want, and Moon-madness, and the 


And fly, as through their ranks with 


pest's swift Bane, 


awful might 


When its shafts smite, while yet its 


Sweeps in the shadow of eve that Phan- 


bow is twanging, 


tom swift and bright. 


Have each their mark and sign. 




some ghastly stain; 


XX. 


And this was thine, O War ! of hate 




and pain 


And its path made a solitude. — I rose 


Thou loathed slave. I saw all shapes 


And markt its coming; it relaxt its 


of death, 


course 


And ministered to many, o'er the 


As it approacht me, and the wind that 


plain 


flows 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



' 7 



Through night bore accents to mine 

ear whose force 
Might create smiles in death — the 
Tartar horse 
Paused, and I saw the Shape its might 
which swayed, 
And heard her musical pants, like 
the sweet source 
Of waters in the desert, as she said, 
"Mount with me, Laon, now!" — I 
rapidly obeyed. 

XXI. 

Then "Away! away!" she cried, 
and stretcht her sword 
As 't were a scourge over the 
courser's head. 
And lightly shook the reins. — We 
spake no word, 
But like the vapor of the tempest 

fled 
Over the plain; her dark hair was 
dispread 
Like the pine's locks upon the linger- 
ing blast; 
Over mine eyes its shadowy strings 
it spread 
Fitfully, and the hills and streams fled 
fast. 
As o'er their glimmering forms the 
steed's broad shadow past. 

XXII. 

And his hoofs ground the rocks to fire 
and dust, 
His strong sides made the torrents 
rise in spray. 
And turbulence, as of a whirlwind's 
gust, 
Surrounded us; — and still away! 

away ! 
Through the desert night we sped, 
while she alway 
Gazed on a mountain which we neared, 
whose crest. 
Crowned with a marble ruin, in the 
ray 
Of the obscure stars gleamed; — its 
rugged breast 
The steed strained up, and then his 
impulse did arrest. 



XXIII. 



A rocky hill which overhung the 
ocean: — 
From that lone ruin, when the steed 
that panted 
Paused, might be heard the murmur 
of the motion 
Of waters, as in spots forever 

haunted 
By the choicest winds of Heaven, 
which are enchanted 
To music by the wand of Solitude, 
That wizard wild, and the far tents 
implanted 
Upon the plain be seen by those who 
stood 
Thence marking the dark shore of 
ocean's curved flood. 



XXIV. 

One moment these were heard and 
seen — another 
Past; and the two who stood be- 
neath that night 
Each only heard or saw or felt the 
other; 
As from the lofty steed she did 

alight, 
Cythna (for, from the eyes whose 
deepest light 
Of love and sadness made my lips feel 
pale 
With influence strange of mourn- 
fullest delight. 
My own sweet Cythna looked) with 
joy did quail, 
And felt her strength in tears of human 
weakness fail. 

XXV. 

And for a space in my embrace she 
rested, 

Her head on my unquiet heart repos- 
ing, 
W^hile my faint arms her languid frame 
invested : 

At length she looked on me, and, 
half unclosing 

Her tremulous lips, said: " Friend, 
thy bands were losing 



THE REVOLT OE ISLAM. 



The battle, as I stood before the King 
In bonds. I burst them then, and, 
swiftly choosing 
The time, did seize a Tartar's sword, 
and spring 
Upon his horse, and, swift as on the 
whirlwind's wing, 

XXVI. 

" Have thou and I been borne beyond 
pursuer, 
And we are here." — Then, turning 
to the steed. 
She pressed the white moon on his 
front with pure 
And rose-like lips, and many a fra- 
grant weed 
From the green ruin plucked that 
he might feed; — 
But I to a stone seat that Maiden 
led, 
And kissing her fair eyes, said, 
" Thou hast need 
Of rest," and I heapt up the courser's 

bed 
In a green mossy nook, with mountain- 
flowers dispread. 

XXVII. 

Within that ruin, where a shattered 
portal 
Looks to the eastern stars, aban- 
doned now 
By man, to be the home of things 
immortal, 
Memories like awful ghosts which 

come and go. 
And must inherit all he builds 
below, 
When he is gone, a hall stood; o'er 
whose roof 
Fair clinging weeds with ivy pale 
did grow, 
Clasping its gray rents with a verdur- 
ous woof, 
A hanging dome of leaves, a canopy 
moon-proof. 

XXVIII. 

The autumnal winds, as if spell- 
bound, had made 



A natural couch of leaves in that 
recess, 
Which seasons none disturbed, but. 
in the shade 
Of flowering parasites, did Spring 

love to dress 
With their sweet blooms the wintry 
loneliness 
Of those dead leaves, shedding their 
stars whene'er 
The wandering wind her nurslings 
might caress; 
Whose intertwining fingers ever there 
Made music wild and soft that filled the 
listening air. 

XXIX. 

We know not where we go, or what 
sweet dream 
May pilot us through caverns 
strange and fair 
Of far and pathless passion, while the 
stream 
Of life our bark doth on its whirl- 
pools bear. 
Spreading swift wings as sails to 
the dim air : 
Nor should we seek to know, so the 
devotion 
Of love and gentle thoughts be 
heard still there 
Louder and louder from the utmost 
ocean 
Of universal life, attuning its commotion. 

XXX. 

To the pure all things are pure ! Ob- 
livion wrapt 
Our spirits, and the fearful over- 
throw 
Of public hope was from our being 
snapt. 
Though linked years had bound it 

there; for now 
A power, a thirst, a knowledge, 
which below 
All thoughts, like light beyond the 
atmosphere, 
Clothing its clouds with grace, doth 
ever flow. 
Came on us, as we sate in silence 
there, 



thp: revolt of islam. 



^11 



Beneath the golden stars of the clear 
azure air : — 

XXXI. 

In silence which doth follow talk that 
causes 
The baffled heart to speak with 
sighs and tears, 
When wildering passion swalloweth 
up the pauses 
Of inexpressive speech : — the 

youthful years 
Which we together past, their 
hopes and fears. 
The blood itself which ran within our 
frames. 
That likeness of the features which 
endears 
The thoughts exprest by them, our 
very names, 
And all the winged hours which speech- 
less memory claims, 

XXXII. 

Had found a voice: — and, ere that 
voice did pass, 
The night grew damp and dim, 
and, through a rent 
Of the ruin where we sate, from the 
morass, 
A wandering Meteor by some wild 

wind sent. 
Hung high in the green dome, to 
which it lent 
A faint and pallid lustre; while the 
song 
Of blasts, in which its blue hair 
quivering bent. 
Strewed strangest sounds the moving 
leaves among; 
A wondrous light, the sound as of a 
spirit's tongue. 

XXXIII. 

The Meteor showed the leaves on 

which we sate. 
And Cythna's glowing arms, and 

the thick ties 
Of her soft hair which bent with 

gathered weight 



My neck near hers, her dark and 

deepening eyes. 
Which, as twin phantoms of one 
star that lies 
O'er a dim well move though the star 
reposes, 
Swam in our mute and liquid 
ecstasies. 
Her marble brow, and eager lips, 
like roses, 
With their own fragrance pale, which 
Spring but half uncloses. 

XXXIV. 

The Meteor to its far morass returned; 
The beating of our veins one in- 
terval 
Made still; and then I felt the blood 
that burned 
Within her frame mingle with mine, 

and fall 
Around my heart like fire; and 
over all 
A mist was spread, the sickness of a 
deep 
And speechless swoon of joy, as 
might befal 
Two disunited spirits when they leap 
In union from this earth's obscure and 
fading sleep. 

XXXV. 

Was it one moment that confounded 

thus 

All thought, all sense, all feeling, 

into one 

Unutterable power, which shielded us 

Even from our own cold looks, 

when we had gone 
Into a wide and wild oblivion 
Of tumult and of tenderness? or now 
Had ages, such as make the moon 
and sun, 
The seasons and mankind, their 
changes know. 
Left fear and time unfelt by us alone 
below? 

XXXVI. 

I know not. What are kisses whose 
fire clasps 



178 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



The failing heart in languishment, 
or limb 
Twined within limb? or the quick 
dying gasps 
Of the life meeting, when the faint 

eyes swim 
Through tears of a wide mist 
boundless and dim, 
In one caress? What is the strong 
control 
Which leads the heart that dizzy 
steep to climb 
Where far over the world those vapors 
roll 
Which blend two restless frames in one 
reposing soul? 

XXXVII. 

It is the shadow which doth float 

unseen. 

But not unfelt, o'er blind mortality, 

Whose divine darkness fled not from 

that green 

And lone recess, where lapt in 

peace did lie 
Our ' linked frames, till from the 
changing sky 
That night and still another day had 
fled; 
And then I saw and felt. The 
moon was high. 
And clouds, as of a coming storm, 
were spread 
Under its orb, — loud winds were gath- 
ering overhead. 

XXXVIII. 

Cythna's sweet lips seemed lurid in 
the moon, 
Her fairest limbs with the night 
wind were chill. 
And her dark tresses were all loosely 
strewn 
O'er her pale bosom: — all within 

was still. 
And the sweet peace of joy did 
almost fill 
The depth of her unfathomable look ; — 
And we sate calmly, though that 
rocky hill 
The waves contending in its caverns 
slrook, 



For they foreknew the storm, and the 
gray ruin shook. 

XXXIX. 

There we unheeding sate, in the com- 
munion 
Of interchanged vows which, with 
a rite 
Of faith most sweet and sacred, 

stampt our union. — 
. Few were the living hearts which 
could unite 
Like ours, or celebrate a bridal- 
night 
With such close sympathies; for they 
had sprung 
From linked youth, and from the 
gentle might 
Of earliest love, delayed and cherisht 
long. 
Which common hopes and fears made, 
like a tempest, strong. 

XL. 

And such is Nature's law divine that 
those 
Who grow together cannot choose 
but love. 
If faith or custom do not interpose. 
Or common slavery mar what else 

might move 
All gentlest thoughts; as, in the 
sacred grove 
Which shades the springs of Ethiopian 
Nile, 
That living tree which, if the arrowy 
dove 
Strike with her shadow, shrinks in fear 
awhile, 
But its own kindred leaves clasps while 
the sunbeams smile, 

XLI. 

And clings to them when darkness 
may dissever 
The close caresses of all duller 
plants 
Which bloom on the wide earth ; — 
thus we forever 
Were linkt, for love had nurst us 
in the haunts 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



179 



Where knowledge from its secret 
source enchants 
Young hearts with the fresh music of 
its springing, 
Ere yet its gathered flood feeds 
human wants, 
As the great Nile feeds Egypt; ever 
flinging 
Light on the woven boughs which o'er 
its waves are swinging. 

XLII. 

The tones of Cythna's voice like 
echoes were 
Of those far murmuring streams; 
they rose and fell, 
Mixt with mine own in the tem- 
pestuous air, — 
And so we sate, until our talk befel 
Of the late ruin, swift and horrible. 
And how those seeds of hope might 
yet be sown 
Whose fruit is evil's mortal poison. 
Well 
For us this ruin made a watch-tower 
lone, 
But Cythna's eyes looked faint, and now 
two days were gone 

XLIII. 

Since she had food: — therefore I did 
awaken 
The Tartar steed, who, from his 
ebon mane 
Soon as the clinging slumbers he had 
shaken. 
Bent his thin head to seek the brazen 

rein, 
Following me obediently; with pain 
Of heart so deep and dread that one 
caress. 
When lips and heart refuse to part 
again 
Till they have told their fill, could 
scarce express 
The anguish of her mute and fearful 
tenderness, 

XLIV. 

Cythna beheld me part, as I bestrode 
That willing steed — the tempest 
and the night, 



W'hich gave my path its safety as I 
rode 
Down the ravine of rocks, did soon 

unite 
The darkness and the tumult of their 
might 
Borne on all winds. — Far, through 
the streaming rain 
Floating, at intervals the garments 
white 
Of Cythna gleamed, and her voice 
once again 
Came to me on the gust, and soon I 
reached the plain. 

XLV. 

I dreaded not the tempest, nor did he 

Who bore me, but his eyeballs wide 

and red 

Turned on the lightning's cleft exult- 

ingly : 

And, when the earth beneath his 

tameless tread 
Shook with the sullen thunder, he 
would spread 
His nostrils to the blast, and joyously 
Mock the fierce peal with neighings; 
— thus we sped 
O'er the lit plain, and soon I could 
descry 
Where Death and Fire had gorged the 
spoil of victory. 

XLVI. 

There was a desolate village in a 
wood. 
Whose bloom-inwoven leaves now 
scattering fed 
The hungry storm; it was a place of 
blood, 
A heap of hearthless walls; — the 

flames were dead 
Within those dwellings now, — the 
life had fled 
From all those corpses now, — but the 
wide sky. 
Flooded with lightning, was ribbed 
overhead 
By the black rafters, and around did lie 
Women, and babes, and men slaughtered 
confusedly. 



iSo 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



XLVII 

Beside the fountain in the market-place 

Dismounting, I beheld those corpses 

stare 

With horny eyes upon each other's 

face, 

And on the earth, and on the 

vacant air, 
And upon me, close to the waters 
where 
I stoopt to slake my thirst; — I 
shrank to taste, 
For the salt bitterness of blood was 
there; 
But tied the steed beside, and sought 
in haste 
If any yet survived amid that ghastly 
waste. 

XLVIII. 

No living thing was there beside one 
woman 
Whom I found wandering in the 
streets, and she 
Was withered from a likeness of aught 
human 
Into a fiend, by some strange misery : 
Soon as she heard my steps, she 
leapt on me. 
And glued her burning lips to mine, 
and laught 
With a loud, long, and frantic laugh 
of glee. 
And cried, "Now, Mortal, thou hast 

deeply quafft 
The Plague's blue kisses — soon millions 
shall pledge the draught ! 

XLIX. 

**My name is Pestilence — this bosom 
dry 
Once fed two babes — a sister and 
a brother — 
When I came home, one in the blood 
did lie 
Of three death wounds — the flames 

had ate the other ! 
Since then I have no longer been a 
mother. 
But I am Pestilence; — hither and 
thither 



I flit about, that I may slay and 
smother; — 
All lips which I have kist must 
surely wither. 
But Death's — if thou art he, we'll go 
to work together ! 



"What seek'st thou here? The 
moonlight comes in flashes, — 
The dew is rising dankly from the 
dell — 
'T will moisten her ! and thou shalt 
see the gashes 
In my sweet boy, now full of 

worms — but tell 
First what thou seek'st." — "I 
seek for food." — " 'Tis well. 
Thou shalt have food; Famine, my 
paramour. 
Waits for us at the feast — cruel 
and fell 
Is Famine, but he drives not from his 
door 
Those whom these lips have kist, 
alone. No more, no more!" 

LI. 

As thus she spake, she graspt me 
with the strength 
Of madness, and by many a ruined 
hearth 
She led, and over many a corpse : — 
at length 
We came to a lone hut, where, on 

the earth 
Which made its floor, she in her 
ghastly mirth. 
Gathering from all those homes now 
desolate. 
Had piled three heaps of loaves, 
making a dearth 
Among the dead — round which she 
set in state 
A ring of cold stiff babes; silent and 
stark they sate. 

LII. 

She leapt upon a pile, and Ufted 
high 
Her mad looks to the lightning, and 
cried: " Eat ! 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



i8i 



Share the great feast — to-morrow we 
must die ! " 
And then she spurned the loaves, 

with her pale feet, 
Towards her bloodless guests; — 
that sight to meet, 
Mine eyes and my heart ached, and, 
but that she 
"Who loved me did with absent 
looks defeat 
Despair, I might have raved in sym- 
pathy : 
But now I took the food that woman 
offered me; 

LIII. 

And, vainly having with her madness 
striven 
If I might win her to return with 
me, 
Departed. In the eastern beams of 
Heaven 
The lightning now grew pallid — 

rapidly 
As by the shore of the tempestuous 
sea 
The dark steed bore me, and the 
mountain gray 
Soon echoed to his hoofs, and I 
could see 
Cythna among the rocks, where she 
alway 
Had sate with anxious eyes fixed on the 
lingering day. 

LIV. 

And joy was ours to meet: she was 
most pale, 
Famisht, and vv^et, and weary; so 
I cast 
My arms around her, lest her steps 
should fail 
As to our home we went, and thus 

embraced. 
Her full heart seemed a deeper joy 
to taste 
Than e'er the prosperous know; the 
steed behind 
Trod peacefully along the mountain 
waste : 
We reach our home ere morning 
could unbind . 



Night's latest veil, and on our bridal- 
couch reclined. 



LV. 

Her chilled heart having cherisht in 
my bosom, 
And sweetest kisses past, we two 
did share 
Our peaceful meal : — as an autumnal 
blossom 
Which spreads its shrunk leaves in 

the sunny air 
After cold showers, like rainbows 
woven there. 
Thus in her lips and cheeks the vital 
spirit 
Mantled, and in her eyes an atmos- 
phere 
Of health and hope; and sorrow 
languished near it. 
And fear, and all that dark despondence 
doth inherit. 



CANTO VII. 



So we sate joyous as the morning ray 

Which fed upon the wrecks of 

night and storm 

Now lingering on the winds; light 

airs did play 

Among the dewy weeds, the sun 

was warm, 
And we sate linkt in the inwoven 
charm 
Of converse and caresses sweet and 
deep, 
Speechless caresses, talk that might 
disarm 
Time, though he wield the darts of 
death and sleep, 
And those thrice mortal barbs in his 
own poison steep. 

11. 

I told her of my sufferings and my 
madness. 
And how, awakened from thai 
dreamy mood 



I82 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



By Liberty's uprise, the strength of 
gladness 
Came to my spirit in my solitude; 
And all that now I was; while tears 
pursued 
Each other down her fair and listen- 
ing cheek 
Fast as the thoughts which fed 
them, like a flood 
From sunbright dales; and, when I 
ceast to speak, 
Her accents soft and sweet the pausing 
air did wake. 

III. 

She told me a strange tale of strange 
endurance. 
Like broken memories of many a 
heart 
Woven into one; to which no firm 
assurance. 
So wild were they, could her own 

faith impart. 
She said that not a tear did dare to 
start 
From the swoln brain, and that her 
thoughts were firm, 
When from all mortal hope she did 
depart, 
Borne by those slaves across the 
ocean's term, 
And that she reached the port without 
one fear infirm. 

IV. 

One was she among many there, the 
thralls 
Of the cold Tyrant's cruel lust: and 
they 
Laught mournfully in those polluted 
halls; 
But she was calm and sad, musing 

alway 
On loftiest enterprise, till on a day 
The Tyrant heard her singing to her 
lute 
A wild and sad and spirit-thrilling 
lay, 
Like winds that die in wastes — one 
moment mute 
The evil thoughts it made which did his 
breast pollute. 



V. 

Even when he saw her wondrous love- 
liness, 
One moment to great Nature s 
sacred power 
He bent, and was no longer passion- 
less; 
But, when he bade her to his secret 

bower 
Be borne, a loveless victim, and she 
tore 
Her locks in agony, and her words of 
flame 
And mightier looks availed not; 
then he bore 
Again his load of slavery, and became 
A king, a heartless beast, a pageant and 
a name. 

VI. 

She told me what a loathsome agony 
Is that when selfishness mocks love's 
delight. 
Foul as in dream's most fearful imagery 
To dally with the mowing dead — 

that night 
All torture, fear, or horror, made 
seem light 
Which the soul dreams or knows, 
and, when the day 
Shone on her awful frenzy, from the 
sight. 
Where like a Spirit in fleshly chains 
she lay 
Struggling, aghast and pale the Tyrant 
fled away. 

VII. 

Her madness was a beam of light, a 
power 
Which dawned through the rent 
soul; and words it gave. 
Gestures, and looks, such as in whirl- 
winds bore 
(Which might not be withstood, 

whence none could save) 
All who approacht their sphere, 
like some calm wave 
Vext into whirlpools by the chasms 
beneath; 
And sympathy made each attendant 
« slave 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



18-^ 



Fearless and free, and they began to 
breathe 
Deep curses, Hke the voice of flames far 
underneath. 

VIII. 

The King felt pale upon his noon-day 
throne : 
At night two slaves he to her cham- 
ber sent; 
One was a green and wrinkled eunuch, 
grown 
From human shape into an instru- 
ment 
Of all things ill — distorted, bowed, 
and bent; 
The other was a wretch from infancy 
Made dumb by poison, who naught 
knew or meant 
But to obey; from the fire-isles came 
he, 
A diver lean and strong, of Oman's coral 
sea. 

IX. 

They bore her to a bark, and the swift 
stroke 
Of silent rowers clove the blue 
moonlight seas, 
Until upon their path the morning 
broke ; 
They anchored then where, be there 

calm or breeze, 
The gloomiest of the drear Sym- 
plegades 
Shakes with the sleepless surge; — the 
Ethiop there 
Wound his long arms around her, 
and with knees 
Like iron clasped her feet, and 
plunged with her 
Among the closing waves out of the 
boundless air. 

X. 

*' Swift as an eagle stooping from the 

plain 
Of morning light into some shadowy 

wood. 
He plnnged through the green silence 

of the main, 



Through many a cavern which the 

eternal flood 
Had scoopt as dark lairs for its 
monster brood; 
And among mighty shapes which fled 
in wonder. 
And among mightier shadows which 
pursued 
His heels, he wound; until the dark 
rocks under 
He touched a golden chain — a sound 
arose like thunder. 



XI. 

*'A stunning clang of massive bolts 
redoubling 
Beneath the deep — a burst of waters 
driven 
As from the roots of the sea, raging 
and bubbling: 
And in that roof of crags a space 

was riven 
Through which there shone the em- 
erald beams of heaven. 
Shot through the lines of many waves 
inwoven 
Like sunlight through acacia woods 
at even, 
Through which his way the diver hav- 
ing cloven 
Past like a spark sent up out of a burn- 
ing oven. 

XII. 

"And then," she said, "he laid me 
in a cave 
Above the waters, by that chasm of 
sea, 
A fountain round and vast, in which 

the wave, 
^ Imprisoned, boiled and leapt per- 
petually, 
Down which, one moment resting, 
he did flee. 
Winning the adverse depth; that spa- 
cious cell 
Like an hupaithric temple wide and 
high. 
Whose aery dome is inaccessible. 
Was pierced with one round cleft 
through which the sunbeams fell 



i84 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



XIII. 

** Below, the fountain's brink was 
richly paven 
With the deep's wealth, coral and 
pearl, and sand 
Like spangling gold, and purple shells 
engraven 
With mystic legends by no mortal 

hand. 
Left there when, thronging to the 
moon's command, 
The gathering waves rent the Hes- 
perian gate 
Of mountains, and on such bright 
floor did stand 
Columns, and shapes like statues, and 
the state 
Of kingless thrones, which Earth did in 
her heart create. 



XIV. 

**The fiend of madness which had 
made its prey 
Of my poor heart was lulled to 
sleep awhile : 
There was an interval of many a day. 
And a sea-eagle brought me food 

the while. 
Whose nest was built in that un- 
trodden isle, 
And who to be the jailer had been 
taught 
Of that strange dungeon; as a friend 
whose smile 
Like light and rest at morn and even 
is sought 
That wild bird was to me, till madness 
misery brought. 

XV. 

" The misery of a madness slow and 
creeping. 
Which made the earth seem fire, 
the sea seem air. 
And the white clouds of noon, which 
oft were sleeping 
In the blue heaven so beautiful and 

fair, 
Like hosts of ghastly shadows hov- 
ering there; 



And the sea-eagle looked a fiend who 
bore 
Thy mangled limbs for food ! — 
Thus all things were 
Transformed into the agony which I 
wore 
Even as a poisoned robe around my 
bosom's core. 

XVI. 

"Again I knew the day and night fast 
fleeing. 
The eagle and the fountain and the 
air; 
Another frenzy came — there seemed 
a being 
Within me — a strange load my 

heart did bear. 
As if some living thing had made its 
lair 
Even in the fountains of my life: — a 
long 
And wondrous vision, wrought from 
my despair, 
Then grew, like sweet reality among 
Dim visionary woes, an unreposing 
throng. 

XVII. 

*' Methought I was about to be a 
mother — 
Month after month went by, and 
still I dreamt 
That we should soon be all to one 
another, 
I and my child; and still new pulses 

seemed 
To beat beside my heart, and still 
I deemed 
There was a babe within — and, when 
the rain 
Of winter through the rifted cavern 
streamed, 
Methought, after a lapse of lingering 
pain, 
I saw that lovely shape which near my" 
heart had lain. 

XVIII. 

"It was a babe, beautiful from its 
birth, — 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



185 



It was like thee, dear love, its eyes 
were thine, 
Its brow, its lips, and so upon the 
earth 
It laid its fingers as now rest on 

mine 
Thine own, beloved! — 't was a 
dream divine; 
Even to remember how it fled, how 
swift, 
How utterly, might make the heart 
repine, — 
Though 't was a dream." — Then 
Cythna did uplift 
Her looks on mine, as if some doubt 
she sought to shift : 

XIX. 

A doubt which would not flee, a ten- 
derness 
Of questioning grief, a source of 
thronging tears : 
Which having past, as one whom sobs 
oppress 
She spoke: " Vcs, in the wilderness 

of years 
Her memory aye like a green home 
appears; 
She suckt her fill even at this breast, 
sweet love. 
For many months. I had no mortal 
fears; 
Methought I felt her lips and breath 
approve 
It was a human thing which to my bosom 
clove. 

XX. 

*' I watcht the dawn of her first 
smiles, and soon. 
When zenith-stars were trembling 
on the wave. 
Or when the beams of the invisible 
moon 
Or sun from many a prism within 

the cave 
Their gem-born shadows to the 
water gave. 
Her looks would hunt them, and with 
outspread hand, 
From the swift lights which might 
that fountain pave, 



She would mark one, and laugh when, 
that command 
Slighting, it lingered there, and could 
not understand. 



XXI. 

" Methought her looks began to talk 
with me : 
And no articulate sounds but some- 
thing sweet 
Her lips would frame, — so sweet it 
could not be 
That it was meaningless; her touch 

would meet 
Mine, and our pulses calmly flow 
and beat 
In response while we slept; and, on 
a day 
When I was happiest in that strange 
retreat, 
With heaps of golden shells we two 
did play, — 
Both infants weaving wings for time's 
perpetual way. 

XXII. 

"Ere night, methought, her waning 
eyes were grown 
Weary with joy, and, tired with our 
delight. 
We on the earth like sister twins lay 
down 
On one fair mother's bosom: — 

from that night 
She fled; — like those illusions clear 
and bright 
Which dwell in lakes when the red 
moon on high 
Pause ere it wakens tempest; — and 
her flight, 
Though 't was the death of brainless 
fantasy. 
Yet smote my lonesome heart more than 
all misery, 

XXIII. 

" It seemed that, in the dreary night, 
the diver 
Who brought me thither came again, 
and bore 



1 86 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



My child away. I saw the waters 
quiver 
When he so swiftly sunk, as once 

before : 
Then morning came — it shone even 
as of yore, 
But I was changed — the very life was 
gone 
Out of my heart — I wasted more 
and more 
Day after day, and, sitting there 
alone, 
Vext the inconstant waves with my per- 
petual moan. 

XXIV. 

** I was no longer mad, and yet me- 
thought 
My breasts were swoln and changed : 
— in every vein 
The blood stood still one moment, 
while that thought 
Was passing — with a gush of sick- 
ening pain 
It ebbed even to its withered springs 
again : 
When my wan eyes in stern resolve I 
turned 
From that most strange delusion, 
which would fain 
Have waked the dream for which my 
spirit yearned 
With more than human love, — then 
left it unreturned. 

XXV. 

*'So, now my reason was restored to 
me, 
I struggled with that dream, which, 
like a beast 
Most fierce and beauteous, in my 
memory 
Had made its lair, and on my heart 

did feast; 
But all that cave and all its shapes, 
possest 
By thoughts which could not fade, re- 
newed each one 
Some smile, some look, some ges- 
ture, which had blest 
Me heretofore; I, sitting there alone, 



Vext the inconstant waves with my per- 
petual moan. 

XXVI. 

"Time past, I know not whether 
months or years; 
For day nor night nor change of 
seasons made 
Its note, but thoughts and unavailing 
tears; 
And I became at last even as a 

shade, 
A smoke, a cloud on which the 
winds have preyed 
Till it be thin as air; until, one even, 
A Nautilus upon the fountain played, 
Spreading his azure sail where breath 
of Heaven 
Descended not, among the waves and 
whirlpools driven. 

XXVII. 

" And, when the Eagle came, that 

lovely thing. 

Oaring with rosy feet its silver boat, 

Fled near me as for shelter; on slow 

wing 

The Eagle hovering o'er his prey 

did float; 
But, when he saw that I with fear 
did note 
His purpose, proffering my own food 
to him. 
The eager plumes subsided on his 
throat — 
He came where that bright child of 
sea did swim. 
And o'er it cast in peace his shadow 
broad and dim. 

XXVIII. 

" This wakened me, it gave me human 

strength; 
And hope, I know not whence or 

wherefore, rose. 
But I resumed my ancient powers at 

length; 
My spirit felt again like one of 

those, 
Like thine, whose fate it is to make 

the woes 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



1S7 



Of humankind their prey — what was 
this cave? 
Its deep foundation no firm purpose 
knows, 
Immutable, resistless, strong to save, 
Like mind while yet it mocks the all- 
devouring grave. 

XXIX. 

"And where was Laon? might my 
heart be dead 
While that far dearer heart could 
move and be? 
Or whilst over the earth the pall was 
spread 
Which I had sworn to rend? I 

might be free. 
Could I but win that friendly bird 
to me 
To bring me ropes; and long in vain 
I sought, 
By intercourse of mutual imagery 
Of objects, if such aid he could be 
taught; 
But fruit and flowers and boughs, yet 
never ropes, he brought. 

XXX. 

*' We live in our own world, and mine 
was made 
From glorious fantasies of hope de- 
parted: 
Ay, we are darkened with their float- 
ing shade. 
Or cast a lustre on them — time 

imparted 
Such power to me I became fear- 
less-hearted. 
My eye and voice grew firm, calm was 
my mind, 
And piercing, like the morn now it 
has darted 
Its lustre on all hidden things behind 
Yon dim and fading clouds which load 
the weary wind. 

XXXI. 

*'My mind became the book through 
which I grew 
Wise in all human wisdom, and its 
cave 



Which like a mine I rifled through 

and through. 
To me the keeping of its secrets 
gave, — 
One mind, the type of all, the move- 
less wave 
Whose calm reflects all moving things 
that are. 
Necessity and love and life, the grave 
And sympathy, fountains of hope and 
fear, 
Justice and truth and time and the 
world's natural sphere. 



XXXII. 

"And on the sand would I make 
signs to range 
These woofs, as they were woven, of 
my thought; 
Clear elemental shapes, whose smallest 
change 
A subtler language within language 

wrought : 
The key of truths which once were 
dimly taught 
In old Crotona; — and sweet melodies 
Of love in that lorn solitude I 
caught 
From mine own voice in dream, when 
thy dear eyes 
Shone through my sleep, and did that 
utterance harmonize. 



XXXIII. 

*' Thy songs were winds whereon I fled 

at will. 

As in a winged chariot, o'er the plain 

Of crystal youth; and thou wert there 

to fill 

My heart with joy, and there we 

sate again 
On the gray margin of the glimmer- 
ing main, 
Happy as then, but wiser far, for we 
Smiled on the flowery grave in which 
were lain 
Fear, Faith, and Slavery; and man- 
kind was free. 
Equal, and pure, and wise, in wisdom's 
prophecy. 



1 88 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



XXXIV. 

" For to my will my fancies were as 
slaves 
To do their sweet and subtile minis- 
tries; 
And oft from that bright fountain's 
shadowy waves 
They would make human throngs 

gather and rise 
To combat with my overflowing eyes 
And voice made deep with passion — 
thus I grew 
Familiar with the shock and the 
surprise 
And war of earthly minds, from which 
I drew 
The power which has been mine to frame 
their thoughts anew. 

XXXV. 

"And thus my prison was the popu- 
lous earth — 
Where I saw — even as misery dreams 
of morn 
Before the east has given its glory 
birth — 
Religion's pomp made desolate by 

the scorn 
Of Wisdom's faintest smile, and 
thrones uptorn. 
And dwellings of mild people inter- 
spersed 
With undivided fields of ripening 
corn. 
And love made free, — a hope which 
we have nurst 
Even with our blood and tears, — until 
its glory burst. 

XXXVI. 

*' All is not lost ! There is some rec- 
ompense 

For hope whose fountain can be 
thus profound, 
Even throned Evil's splendid impo- 
tence 

Girt by its hell of power, the secret 
sound 

Of hymns to truth and freedom — 
the dread bound 



Of life and death past fearlessly and 
well, 

Dungeons wherein the high resolve is 
found. 

Racks which degraded woman's great- 
ness tell. 
And what may else be good and irresist- 
ible. 

XXXVII. 

" Such are the thoughts which, like 
the fires that flare 
In storm-encompast isles, we cherish 
yet 
In this dark ruin — such were mine 
even there; 
As in its sleep some odorous violet, 
While yet its leaves with nightly 
dews are wet. 
Breathes in prophetic dreams of day's 
uprise. 
Or as, ere Scythian frost in fear has 
met 
Spring's messengers descending from 
the skies, 
The buds foreknow their life — this hope 
must ever rise. 

XXXVIII. 

" So years had past, when sudden 
earthquake rent 
The depth of ocean, and the cavern 
crackt, 
With sound as if the world's wide 
continent 
Had fallen in universal ruin wrackt : 
And through the cleft streamed in 
one cataract 
The stifling waters. — When I woke, 
the flood, 
Whose banded waves that crystal 
cave had sackt. 
Was ebbing round me, and my bright 
abode 
Before me yawned — a chasm desert and 
bare and broad. 

XXXIX. 

"Above me was the sky, beneath the 
sea: 
I stood upon a point of shattered 
stone, 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



189 



And heard loose rocks rushing tumul- 
tuously 
With splash and shock into the 

deep — anon 
All ceast, and there was silence 
wide and lone. 
I felt that I was free ! The ocean- 
spray 
Quivered beneath my feet, the broad 
Heaven shone 
Around, and in my hair the winds did 
play. 
Lingering, as they pursued their unim- 
peded way. 

XL. 

*' My spirit moved upon the sea like 
wind, 
Which round some thymy cape will 
lag and hover, 
Though it can wake the still cloud, 
and unbind 
The strength of tempest : day was 

almost over, 
When through the fading light I 
could discover 
A ship approaching — its white sails 
were fed 
With the north wind — its moving 
shade did cover 
The twilight deep; — the mariners in 
dread 
Cast anchor when they saw new rocks 
around them spread. 

XLI. 

"And, when they saw one sitting on 
a crag, 
They sent a boat to me; — the 
sailors rowed 
In awe through many a new and fear- 
ful jag 
Of overhanging rock, through which 

there flowed 
The foam of streams that cannot 
make abode. 
They came and questioned me, but, 
when they heard 
My voice, they became silent, and 
they stood 
And moved as men in whom new love 
had stirred 



Deep thoughts: so to the ship we past 
without a word. 



CANTO VIII. 



" I SATE beside the steersman then, 
and, gazing 
Upon the west, cried, ' Spread the 
sails ! Behold ! 
The sinking moon is like a watch- 
tower blazing 
Over the mountains yet; the City of 

Gold 
Yon cape alone does from the sight 
withhold; 
The stream is fleet — the north breathes 
steadily 
Beneath the stars, they tremble with 
the cold ! 
Ye cannot rest upon the dreary sea ! — 
Haste, haste to the warm home of 
happier destiny ! ' 



"The mariners obeyed — the Captain 
stood 
Aloof, and, whispering to the pilot, 
said : 
' Alas, alas ! I fear we are pursued 
By wicked ghosts : a Phantom of the 

Dead, 
The night before we sailed, came to 
my bed 
In dream, like that ! ' The pilot then 
replied : 
'It cannot be — she is a human 
Maid — 
Her low voice makes you weep — she 
is some bride 
Or daughter of high birth — she can be 
naught beside.' 

III. 

"We past the islets, borne by wind 

and stream, 
And, as we sailed, the mariners 

came near 
And thronged around to listen; — in 

the gleam 



190 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



Of the pale moon I stood, as one 

whom fear 
May not attaint, and my calm voice 
did rear; 
'Ye all are human — yon broad moon 
gives light 
To millions who the selfsame like- 
ness wear, 
Even while I speak — beneath this 
very night 
Their thoughts flow on like ours, in sad- 
ness or delight. 

IV. 

*' ' What dream ye? Your own hands 
have built an home, 
Even for yourselves on a beloved 
shore : 
For some, fond eyes are pining till 
they come, 
How they will greet him when his 

toils are o'er, 
And laughing babes rush from the 
well-known door ! 
Is this your care? ye toil for your own 
good — 
Ye feel and think — has some im- 
mortal power 
Such purposes? or, in a human mood. 
Dream ye some Power thus builds for 
iTian in solitude? 



V. 



"*What is that Power? Ye mock 
yourselves, and give 
A human heart to what ye cannot 
know: 
As if the cause of life could think and 
live ! 
'T were as if man's own works 

should feel, and show 
The hopes and fears and thoughts 
from which they flow, 
And he be like to them ! Lo ! Plague 
is free 
To waste. Blight, Poison, Earth- 
quake, Hail, and Snow, 
Disease and Want, and worse Neces- 
sity 
Of hate and ill, and Pride, and Fear, 
and Tyranny ! 



VI. 

" ' What is that Power? Some moon- 
struck sophist stood 
Watching the shade from his own 
soul upthrown 
Fill Heaven and darken Earth, and in 
such mood 
The Form he saw and worshipt was 

his own. 
His likeness in the world's vast 
mirror shown; 
And 't were an innocent dream, but 
that a faith 
Nurst by fear's dew of poison 
grows thereon. 
And that men say that Power has 
chosen Death 
On all who scorn its laws to wreak im- 
mortal wrath. 

VII. 

" ' Men say that they themselves have 
heard and seen. 
Or known from others who have 
known such things, 
A Shade, a Form, which Earth and 

Heaven between. 
Wields an invisible rod — that Priests 
and Kings, 
Custom, domestic sway, ay all that 
brings 
Man's freeborn soul beneath the op- 
pressor's heel. 
Are his strong ministers, and that 
the stings 
Of Death will make the wise his ven- 
geance feel. 
Though truth and virtue arm their hearts 
with tenfold steel. 

VIII. 

'*'And it is said this Power will 
punish wrong; 
Yes, add despair to crime, and pain 
to pain ! 
And deepest hell and deathless snakes 
among 
Will bind the wretch on whom is 

fixt a stain 
Which like a plague, a burden, and 
a bane. 



FHE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



191 



Clung to him while he lived; — for love 
and hate, 
Virtue and vice, they say, are differ- 
ence vain — 
The will of strength is right — this 
human state 
Tyrants, that they may rule, with lies 
thus desolate. 



IX. 



" * Alas, what strength? Opinion is 
more frail 
Than yon dim cloud now fading on 
the moon 
Even while we gaze, though it awhile 
avail 
To hide the orb of truth — and every 

throne 
Of Earth or Heaven, though shadow, 
rests thereon, 
One shape of many names : — for this 
ye plough 
The barren waves of ocean, hence 
each one 
Is slave or tyrant; all betray and bow. 
Command or kill or fear, or wreak or 
suffer woe. 

X. 

" ' Its names are each a sign which 
maketh holy 
All power — ay, the ghost, the 
dream, the shade, 
Of power — lust, falsehood, hate, and 
pride, and folly; 
The pattern whence all fraud and 

wrong is made, 
A law to which mankind has been 
betrayed; 
And human love is as the name well 
known 
Of a dear mother whom the mur- 
derer laid 
In bloody grave, and, into darkness 
thrown. 
Gathered her wildered babes around 
him as his own. 

XI. 

"'Oh! Love, who to the heart of 
wandering man 



Art as the calm to ocean's weary 
waves ! 
Justice, or truth, or joy ! those only 
can 
From slavery and religion's laby- 
rinth caves 
Guide us, as one clear star the tea- 
man saves. 
To give to all an equal share of good, 
To track the steps of Freedom, 
though through graves 
She pass, to suffer all in patient mood, 
To weep for crime, though stained with 
thy friend's dearest blood, — 

XII. 

"' To feel the peace of self-content- 
ment's lot. 
To own all sympathies, and outrage 
none, 
And in the inmost bowers of sense and 
thought. 
Until life's sunny day is quite gone 

down. 
To sit and smile with Joy, or, not 
alone. 
To kiss salt tears from the worn cheek 
of Woe; 
To live as if to love and live were 
one; — 
This is not faith or law, nor those 
who bow 
To thrones on Heaven or Earth such 
destiny may know. 

XIII. 

"'But children near their parents 
tremble now, 
Because they must obey — one rules 
another, 
And, as one Power rules both high 
and low. 
So man is made the captive of his 

brother. 
And Hate is throned on high with 
Fear his mother. 
Above the Highest — and those foun- 
tain-cells 
Whence love yet flowed when faith 
had choked all other 
Are darkened — Woman as the bond- 
slave dwells 



192 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM, 



Of man, a slave; and life is poisoned 
in its wells. 



XIV. 

*' 'Man seeks for gold in mines, that 
he may weave 
A lasting chain for his own slav- 
ery; — 
In fear and restless care that he may 
live, 
He toils for others, who must ever 

be 
The joyless thralls of like captivity; 
He murders, for his chiefs delight in 
ruin; 
He builds the altar, that its idol's 
fee 
May be his very blood; he is pursu- 
ing— 
Oh, blind and willing wretch ! — his own 
obscure undoing. 

XV. 

<'' Woman! — she is his slave, she 
has become 
A thing I weep to speak — the child 
of scorn, 
The outcast of a desolated home; 
Falsehood and fear and toil like 

waves have worn 
Channels upon her cheek, which 
smiles adorn 
As calm decks the false ocean: — well 
ye know 
What Woman is, for none of Woman 
born 
Can choose but drain the bitter dregs 
of woe, 
Which ever from the oppressed to the 
oppressors flow. 

XVI. 

" 'This need not be; ye might arise, 
and will 
That gold should lose its power, and 
thrones their glory; 
That love, which none may bind, be 
free to fill 
The world, like light; and evil 
faith, grown hoary 



With crime, be quencht and die. 
— Yon promontory 
Even now eclipses the descending 
moon ! — 
Dungeons and palaces are transi- 
tory — 
High temples fade like vapor — Man 
alone 
Remains, whose will has power when 
all beside is gone. 

XVII. 

" ' Let all be free and equal ! — From 
your hearts 
I feel an echo; through my inmost 
frame, 
Like sweetest sound, seeking its mate, it 
darts. — 
Whence come ye, friends? Alas, I 

cannot name 
All that I read of sorrow, toil, and 
shame. 
On your worn faces; as in legends old 
Which make immortal the disas- 
trous fame 
Of conquerors and impostors false and 
bold. 
The discord of your hearts I in your 
looks behold. 

XVIII. 

" ' Whence come ye, friends? from 
pouring human blood 
Forth on the earth? Or bring ye 
steel and gold. 
That kings may dupe and slay the mul- 
titude? 
Or from the famished poor, pale, 

weak, and cold, 
Bear ye the earnings of their toil ? 
unfold ! 
Speak ! Are your hands in slaughter's 
sanguine hue 
Stained freshly? have your hearts 
in guile grown old? 
Know yourselves thus ! ye shall be 
pure as dew, 
And I will be a friend and sister unto 
you. 

XIX. 

" ' Disguise it not — we have one hu- 
man heart — 



THE RE VOL 7^ OF ISLAM. 



193 



All mortal thoughts confess a com- 
mon home : 
Blush not for what may to thyself im- 
part 
Stains of inevitable crime : the doom 
Is this which has, or may, or must, 
become 
Thine, and all humankind's. Ye are 
the spoil 
Which Time thus marks for the de- 
vouring tomb, 
Thou and thy thoughts, and they, and 
all the toil 
Wherewith ye twine the rings of life's 
perpetual coil. 

XX. 

'* ' Disguise it not — ye blush for what 
ye hate. 
And Enmity is sister unto Shame; 
Look on your mind — it is the book 
of fate — 
Ah ! it is dark with many a 

blazoned name 
Of misery — all are mirrors of the 
same; 
But the dark fiend who with his iron 
pen, 
Dipt in scorn's fiery poison makes 
his fame 
Enduring there, would o'er the heads 

of men 
Pass harmless, if they scorned to make 
their hearts his den. 

XXI. 

" * Yes, it is Hate — that shapeless 
fiendly thing 
Of many names, all evil, some 
divine — 
Whom self-contempt arms with a mor- 
tal sting; 
Which, when the heart its snaky 

folds entwine 
Is wasted quite, and when it doth 
repine 
To gorge such bitter prey, on all 
beside 
It turns with ninefold rage, as, with 
its twine 
When amphisboena some fair bird has 
tied, 



Soon o'er the putrid mass he threats on 
every side. 



XXII. 

'* ' Reproach not thine own soul, but 
know thyself. 
Nor hate another's crime, nor loathe 
thine own. 
It is the dark idolatry of self 

Which, when our thoughts and 

actions once are gone, 
Demands that man should weep and 
bleed and groan; 
Oh vacant expiation ! Be at rest, — 
The past is Death's, the future is 
thine own; 
And love and joy can make the foulest 
breast 
A paradise of flowers where peace might 
build her nest. 

XXIII. 

" ' Speak thou ! whence come ye? ' — 
A Youth made reply : 
' Wearily, wearily o'er the bound- 
less deep 
We sail ; — thou readest well the 
misery 
Told in these faded eyes, but much 

doth sleep 
Within, which there the poor heart 
loves to keep. 
Or dare not write on the dishonored 
brow; 
Even from our childhood have we 
learned to steep 
The bread of slavery in the tears of 
woe. 
And never dreamed of hope or refuge 
until now. 

XXIV. 

"'Yes — I must speak — my secret 
should have perisht 
Even with the heart it wasted, as a 
brand 
Fades in the dying flame whose life it 
cherisht, 
But that no human bosom can with- 
stand 



194 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



Thee, wondrous Lady, and the mild 

command 
Of thy keen eyes: — yes, we are 

wretched slaves, 
Who from their wonted loves and 

native land 
Are reft, and bear o'er the dividing 

waves 
The unregarded prey of calm and happy 

graves. 



XXV. 

** * We drag afar from pastoral vales 
the fairest 
Among the daughters of those 
mountains lone, 
We drag them there where all things 
best and rarest 
Are stained and trampled: — years 

have come and gone 
Since, like the ship which bears me, 
I have known 
No thought; — but now the eyes of 
one dear Maid 
On mine with light of mutual love 
have shone : 
She is my life, — I am but as the shade 
Of her — a smoke sent up from ashes, 
soon to fade. 



XXVI, 

** ' For she must perish in the Tyrant's 
hall — 
Alas, alas ! ' — He ceased, and by 
the sail 
Sate cowering — but his sobs were 
heard by all. 
And still before the ocean and the 

gale 
The ship fled fast till the stars 'gan 
to fail : 
And, round me gathered with mute 
countenance. 
The seamen gazed, the pilot worn 
and pale 
With toil, the captain with gray locks, 
whose glance 
Met mine in restless awe — » they stoocl 
as in a trance. 



XXVII. 

" ' Recede not! pause not now ! 
Thou art grown old. 
But Hope will make thee young, 
for Hope and Youth 
Are children of one mother, even 
Love — behold ! 
The eternal stars gaze on us! — is 

the truth 
Within your soul ? care for your own, 
or ruth 
For others' sufferings? do ye thirst to 
bear 
A heart which not the serpent 
Custom's tooth 
May violate ? — Be free ! and even here 
Swear to be firm till death ! ' They cried 
' We swear ! We swear ! ' 



XXVIII. 

"The very darkness shook, as with 
a blast 
Of subterranean thunder, at the cry; 
The hollow shore its thousand echoes 
cast 
Into the night, as if the sea and sky 
And earth rejoiced with new-born 
liberty. 
For in that name they swore ! Bolts 
were undrawn, 
And on the deck, with unaccus- 
tomed eye, 
The captives gazing stood, and every 
one 
Shrank as the inconstant torch upon her 
countenance shone. 

XXIX. 

" They were earth's purest children, 
young and fair. 
With eyes the shrines of un- 
awakened thought. 
And brows as bright as Spring or 
morning, ere 
Dark time had there its evil legend 

wrought 
In characters of cloud which wither 
not. — 
The change was like a dream to them; 
but soon 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



195 



They knew the glory of their altered 
lot, 
In the bright wisdom of youth's breath- 
less noon, 
Sweet talk and smiles and sighs all 
bosoms did attune. 

XXX. 

" But one was mute; her cheeks and 

lips most fair, 

Changing their hue like lilies newly 

blown 

Beneath a bright acacia's shadowy hair 

Waved by the wind amid the sunny 

noon, 
Showed that her soul was quiver- 
ing; and full soon 
That Youth arose, and breathlessly 
did look 
On her and me, as for some speech- 
less boon : 
I smiled, and both their hands in mine 
I took, 
And felt a soft delight from what their 
spirits shook. 



CANTO IX. 



"That night we anchored in a woody 
bay, 
And sleep no more around us dared 
to hover 
Than, when all doubt and fear has 
passed away. 
It shades the couch of some unrest- 
ing lover 
Whose heart is now at rest : thus 
night passed over 
In mutual joy : — around, a forest grew 
Of poplars and dark oaks, whose 
shade did cover 
The waning stars prankt in the 

waters blue, 
And trembled in the wind which from 
the morning flew. 



II. 



** The joyous mariners and each free 
maiden 



Now brought from the deep forest 
many a bough, 
With woodland spoil most innocently 
laden; 
Soon wreaths of budding foliage 

seemed to flow 
Over the mast and sails, the stern 
and prow 
Were canopied with blooming boughs, 
— the while 
On the slant sun's path o'er the 
waves we go 
Rejoicing, like the dwellers of an isle 
Doomed to pursue those waves that 
cannot cease to smile. 

III. 

"The many ships spotting the dark- 
blue deep 
With snowy sails fled fast as ours 
came nigh, 
In fear and wonder; and on every 
steep 
Thousands did gaze; they heard the 

startling cry, 
Like Earth's own voice lifted un- 
conquerably 
To all her children, the unbounded 
mirth. 
The glorious joy of thy name — 
Liberty ! 
They heard ! — As o'er the mountains 
of the earth 
From peak to peak leap on the beams 
of morning's birth: 

IV. 

"So from that cry over the boundless 
hills 
Sudden was caught one universal 
sound. 
Like a volcano's voice whose thunder 
fills 
Remotest skies, — such glorious 

madness found 
A path through human hearts with 
stream which drowned 
Its struggling fears and cares, dark 
Custom's brood; 
They knew not whence it came, 
but felt around 



196 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



A wide contagion poured — they called 
aloud 
On Liberty — that name lived on the 
sunny flood. 



" We reached the port. — Alas ! from 
many spirits 
The wisdom which had waked that 
cry was fled, 
Like the brief glory which dark 
Heaven inherits 
From the false dawn, which fades 

ere it is spread, 
Upon the night's devouring dark- 
ness shed : 
Yet soon bright day will burst — even 
like a chasm 
Of fire, to burn the shrouds out- 
worn and dead 
Which wrap the world; a wide en- 
thusiasm. 
To cleanse the fevered world as with 
an earthquake's spasm ! 

VI. 

" I walkt through the great City 
then, but free 
From shame or fear; those toil-' 
worn mariners 
And happy maidens did encompass 
me; 
And, like a subterranean wind that 

stirs 
Some forest among caves, the hopes 
and fears 
From every human soul a murmur 
strange 
Made as I past : and many wept, 
with tears 
Of joy and awe, and winged thoughts 
did range. 
And half-extinguisht words which pro- 
phesied of change. 

VII. 

" For with strong speech I tore the 
veil that hid 
Nature, and Truth, and Liberty, and 
Love, — 



As one who from some mountain's 
pyramid 
Points to the unrisen sun ! — the 

shades approve 
His truth, and flee from every 
stream and grove. 
Thus, gentle thoughts did many a 
bosom fill, — 
Wisdom the mail of tried affections 
wove 
For many a heart, and tameless scorn 
of ill 
Thrice steept in molten steel the un- 
conquerable will. 

VIII. 

" Some said I was a maniac wild and 
lost; 
Some, that I scarce had risen from 
the grave, 
The Prophet's virgin bride, a heavenly 
ghost : — 
Some said I was a fiend from my 

weird cave. 
Who had stolen human shape, and 
o'er the wave, 
The forest, and the mountain, came; 

— some said 

I was the child of God, sent down 
to save 
Women from bonds and death, and 
on my head 
The burden of their sins would fright- 
fully be laid. 

IX. 

" But soon my human words found 
sympathy 
In human hearts: the purest and 
the best. 
As friend with friend, made common 
cause with me, 
And they were few, but resolute; 

— the rest, 

Ere yet success the enterprise had 
blest. 
Leagued with me in their hearts : — 
their meals, their slumber. 
Their hourly occupations, were pos- 
sest 
By hopes which I had armed to over- 
number 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



197 



Those hosts of meaner cares which life's 
strong wings encumber. 



" But chiefly women, whom my voice 
did waken 
From their cold, careless, willing 
slavery. 
Sought me: one truth their dreary 
prison has shaken, 
They lookt around, and lo ! they 

became free ! 
Their many tyrants, sitting deso- 
lately 
In slave-deserted halls, could none 
restrain ; 
For wrath's red fire had withered in 
the eye 
Whose lightning once was death, — 
nor fear nor gain 
Could tempt one captive now to lock 
another's chain. 

XI. 

'' Those who were sent to bind me 
wept, and felt 
Their minds outsoar the bonds which 
claspt them round, 
Even as a waxen shape may waste and 
melt 
In the white furnace; and a visioned 

swound, 
A pause of hope and awe, the City 
bound, 
"Which, like the silence of a tempest's 
birth, 
When in its awful shadow it has 
wound 
The sun, the wind, the ocean, and the 
earth, 
Hung terrible, ere yet the lightnings 
have leapt forth. 

XII. 

** Like clouds inwoven in the silent 
sky 
By winds from distant regions meet- 
ing there. 
In the high name of truth and liberty 
Around the City millions gathered 
were 



By hopes which sprang from many 
a hidden lair. 
Words which the lore of truth in hues 
of flame 
Arrayed, thine own wild songs which 
in the air 
Like homeless odors floated, and the 
name 
Of thee, and many a tongue which thou 
hadst dipt in flame. 

XIII. 

" The Tyrant knew his power was 
gone, but Fear, 
The nurse of Vengeance, bade him 
wait the event — 
That perfidy and custom, gold and 
prayer, 
And whatsoe'er, when force is impo- 
tent, 
To Fraud the sceptre of the world 
has lent, 
Might, as he judged, confirm his fail- 
ing sway. 
Therefore throughout the streets the 
priests he sent 
To curse the rebels. To their gods 
did they 
For Earthquake, Plague, and Want, 
kneel in the public way. 

XIV. 

" And grave and hoary men were 
bribed to tell, 
From seats where law is made the 
slave of wrong. 
How glorious Athens in her splendor 
fell 
Because her sons were free, — and 

that, among 
Mankind, the many to the few be- 
long. 
By Heaven, and Nature, and Neces- 
sity. 
They said that age was truth, and 
that the young 
Marred with wild hopes the peace of 
slavery, 
With which old times and men had 
quelled the vain and free. 



198 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



XV. 

** And with the falsehood of their 
poisonous lips 
They breathed on the enduring mem- 
ory 
Of sages and of bards a brief eclipse; 
There was one teacher, who neces- 
sity 
Had armed with strength and wrong 
against mankind, 
His slave and his avenger aye to be; 
That we were weak and sinful, frail 
and blind, 
And that the will of one was peace, 
and we 
Should seek for naught on earth but 
toil and misery. 



XVI. 

** ' For thus we might avoid the hell 
hereafter.' 
So spake the hypocrites, who curst 
and lied; 
Alas ! their sway was past, and tears 
and laughter 
Clung to their hoary hair, withering 

the pride 
Which in their hollow hearts dared 
still abide; 
And yet obscener slaves with smoother 
brow. 
And sneers on their strait lips, thin, 
blue, and wide, 
Said that the rule of men was over now. 
And hence the subject world to woman's 
will must bow. 

XVII. 

** And gold was scattered through the 
streets, and wine 
Flowed at a hundred feasts within 
the wall. 
In vain ! the steady towers in Heaven 
did shine 
As they were wont, nor at the 

priestly call 
Left Plague her banquet in the 
Ethiop's hall, 
Nor Famine from the rich man's portal 
came, 



Where at her ease she ever preys on 
all 
Who throng to kneel for food : nor 
fear nor shame 
Nor faith, nor discord, dimmed hope's 
newly kindled flame. 

XVIII. 

"For gold was as a god whose faith 
began 
To fade, so that its worshippers were 
few; 
And Faith itself, which in the heart of 
man 
Gives shape, voice, name, to spec- 
tral Terror, knew 
Its downfall, as the altars lonelier 
grew, 
Till the priests stood alone within the 
fane; 
The shafts of Falsehood unpolluting 
flew, 
And the cold sneers of Calumny were 
vain 
The union of the free with Discord's 
brand to stain. 

XIX. 

"The rest thou knowest. — Lo ! we 
two are here — 
We have survived a ruin wide and 
deep — 
Strange thoughts are mine. — I cannot 
grieve or fear; 
Sitting with thee upon this lonely 

steep, 
I smile, though human love should 
make me weep. 
We have survived a joy that knows no 
sorrow. 
And I do feel a mighty calmness 
creep 
Over my heart, which can no longer 
borrow 
Its hues from chance or change, dark 
children of to-morrow. 

XX. 

"We know not what will come — 
yet, Laon, dearest. 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



[99 



Cythna shall be the prophetess of 
Love; 
Her lips shall rob thee of the grace 
thou wearest, 
To hide thy heart, and clothe the 

shapes which rove 
Within the homeless Future's win- 
try grove; 
For I now, sitting thus beside thee, 
seem 
Even with thy breath and blood to 
live and move, 
And violence and wrong are as a dream 
Which rolls from steadfast truth, an un- 
returning stream. 

XXI. 

*'The blasts of Autumn drive the 
winged seeds 
Over the earth, — next come the 
snows, and rain. 
And frosts, and storms, which dreary 
Winter leads 
Out of his Scythian cave, a savage 

train; 
Behold ! Spring sweeps over the 
world again. 
Shedding soft dews from her ethereal 
wings; 
Flowers on the mountains, fruits 
over the plain, 
And music on the waves and woods, 
she flings, 
And love on all that lives, and calm on 
lifeless things. 

XXII. 

*' O Spring, of hope and love and 
youth and gladness 
Wind-winged emblem ! brightest, 
best, and fairest ! 
Whence comest thou when with dark 
Winter's sadness 
The tears that fade in sunny smiles 

thou sharest? 
Sister of joy ! thou art the child 
who wearest 
Thy mother's dying smile, tender and 
sweet ; 
Thy mother Autumn, for whose 
grave thou bearest 



Fresh flowers, and beams like flowers, 
with gentle feet 
Disturbing not the leaves which are hei 
winding-sheet. 

XXIII. 

" Virtue and Hope and Love, like 
light and Heaven, 
Surround the world. We are their 
chosen slaves. 
Has not the whirlwind of our spirit 
driven 
Truth's deathless germs to Thought's 

remotest caves? 
Lo, Winter comes ! — the grief of 
many graves, 
The frost of death, the tempest of the 
sword. 
The flood of tyranny, whose san- 
guine waves 
Stagnate like ice at Faith the enchan- 
ter's word. 
And bind all human hearts in its repose 
abhorred ! 

XXIV. 

"The seeds are sleeping in the soil. 
Meanwhile 
The Tyrant peoples dungeons with 
his prey, 
Pale victims on the guarded scaffold 
smile 
Because they cannot speak; and, 

day by day, 
The moon of wasting Science wanes 
away 
Among her stars, and in that darkness 
vast 
The sons of earth to their foul idols 
pray, 
And gray priests triumph, and like 
blight or blast 
A shade of selfish care o'er human looks 
is cast. 

XXV. 

" This is the winter of the world; — 

and here 
We die, even as the winds of 

Autumn fade. 
Expiring in the frore and foggy air. — • 



200 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



Behold ! Spring comes, though we 

must pass who made 
The promise of its birth, even as 
the shade 
Which from our death, as from a 
mountain, flings 
The future, a broad sunrise; thus 
arrayed 
As with the plumes of overshadowing 
wings. 
From its dark gulf of chains Earth like 
an eagle springs. 

XXVI. 

**0 dearest love! we shall be dead 
and cold 
Before this morn may on the world 
arise : 
Wouldst thou the glory of its dawn 
behold? 
Alas ! gaze not on me, but turn 

thine eyes 
On thine own heart — it is a para- 
dise 
Which everlasting Spring has made 
its own, 
And, while drear winter fills the 
naked skies, 
Sweet streams of sunny thought, and 
flowers fresh-blown. 
Are there, and weave their sounds and 
odors into one. 

XXVII. 

*' In their own hearts the earnest of 
the hope 
Which made them great the good 
will ever find; 
And, though some envious shades may 
interlope 
Between the effect and it. One comes 

behind 
Who aye the future to the past will 
bind — 
Necessity, whose sightless strength for 
ever 
Evil with evil, good with good, 
must wind 
In bands of union which no power 
may sever : 
They must bring forth their kind, and 
be divided never ! 



XXVIII. 

"The good and mighty of departed 
ages, 
Are in their graves, the innocent 
and free, 
Heroes, and Poets, and prevailing 
Sages, 
Who leave the vesture of their 

majesty 
To adorn and clothe this naked 
world; — and we 
Are like to them — such perish, but 
they leave 
All hope, or love, or truth, or liberty 
Whose forms their mighty spirits could 
conceive. 
To be a rule and law to ages that sur- 
vive. 

XXIX. 

"So be the turf heapt over our re- 
mains 
Even in our happy youth, and that 
strange lot, 
Whate'er it be, when in these min- 
gling veins 
The blood is still, be ours; let sense 

and thought 
Pass from our being, or be num- 
bered not 
Among the things that are; let those 
who come 
Behind, for whom our steadfast will 
has bought 
A calm inheritance, a glorious doom, 
Insult with careless tread our undivided 
tomb. 

XXX. 

" Our many thoughts and deeds, our j 
life and love, i 

Our happiness, and all that we have | 
been, i 

Immortally must live and burn and 
move 
When we shall be no more; — the 

world has seen 
A type of peace ; and — as some 
most serene 
And lovely spot to a poor maniac's 
eye. 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



20I 



After long years, some sweet and 
moving scene 
Of youthful hope, returning suddenly, 
Quells his long madness — thus man 
shall remember thee. 

XXXI. 

** And Calumny meanwhile shall feed 
on us 
As worms devour the dead, and 
near the throne 
And at the altar most accepted thus 
Shall sneers and curses be; — what 

we have done 
None shall dare vouch, though it be 
truly known; 
That record shall remain when they 
must pass 
Who built their pride on its oblivion, 
And fame, in human hope which sculp- 
tured was, 
Survive the perished scrolls of unendur- 
ing brass, 

XXXII. * 

"The while we two, beloved, must 
depart. 
And Sense and Reason, those en- 
chanters fair 
Whose wand of power is hope, would 
bid the heart 
That gazed beyond the wormy grave 

despair : 
These eyes, these lips, this blood, 
seem darkly there 
To fade in hideous ruin ; no calm 
sleep, 
Peopling with golden dreams the 
stagnant air, 
Seems our obscure and rotting eyes to 
steep 
In joy; — but senseless death — a ruin 
dark and deep ! 

XXXIII. 

"These are blind fancies — reason 

cannot know 
What sense can neither feel nor 

thought conceive; 
There is delusion in the world, and 

woe, 



And fear, and pain — we know not 

whence we live. 
Or why, or how, or what mute 
Power may give 
Their being to each plant and star and 
beast. 
Or even these thoughts. — Come 
near me ! I do weave 
A chain I cannot break — I am 
possest 
With thoughts too swift and strong for 
one lone human breast. 

XXXIV. 

" Yes, yes — thy kiss is sweet, thy lips 
are warm — 
Oh, willingly, beloved, would these 
eyes. 
Might they no more drink being from 

thy form. 
Even as to sleep whence we again 
arise. 
Close their faint orbs in death: I 
fear nor prize 
Aught that can now betide, unshared 
by thee — 
Yes, Love, when Wisdom fails, 
makes Cythna wise; 
Darkness and death, if death be true, 
must be 
Dearer than life and hope if unenjoyed 
with thee. 



XXXV. 



on with 
Earth 



"Alas, our thoughts flow 
stream whose waters 
Return not to their fountain 
and Heaven, 
The Ocean and the Sun, the Clouds 
their daughters. 
Winter and Spring, and Morn and 

Noon and Even, 
All that we are or know, is darkly 
driven 
Towards one gulf. — Lo ! what a 
change is come 
Since I first spake — but time shall 
be forgiven 
Though it change all but thee!" 
She ceased — night's gloom 
Meanwhile had fallen on earth froni 
the sky's sunless dome. 



202 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



XXXVI. 

Though she had ceased, her counte- 
nance, uplifted 
To Heaven, still spake, with solemn 
glory bright; 
Her dark deep eyes, her lips whose 
motions gifted 
The air they breathed with love, 

her locks undight. 
*' Fair star of life and love," I cried, 
" my soul's delight. 
Why lookest thou on the crystalline 
skies? 
Oh, that my spirit were yon Heaven 
of night 
Which gazes on thee with its thousand 
eyes ! " 
She turned to me and smiled — that 
smile was Paradise ! 



CANTO X. 



Was there a human spirit in the steed. 
That thus with his proud voice, ere 
night was gone. 
He broke our linked rest? or do in- 
deed 
All living things a common nature 

own, 
And thought erect an universal 
throne. 
Where many shapes one tribute ever 
bear? 
And Earth, their mutual mother, 
does she groan 
To see her sons contend? and makes 
she bare 
Her breast, that all in peace its drain- 
less stores may share? 

II. 

I have heard friendly sounds from 
many a tongue 
Which was not human — the lone 
nightingale 

Has answered me with her most sooth- 
ing song 



Out of her ivy bower, when I sate 

pale 
With grief, and sighed beneath; 
from many a dale 
The antelopes who flockt for food 
have spoken 
With happy sounds and motions 
that avail 
Like man's own speech: and such was 
now the token 
Of waning night, whose calm by that 
proud neigh was broken. 



III. 



Each night, that mighty steed bore 
me abroad. 
And I returned with food to our 
retreat, 
And dark intelligence ; the blood 
which flowed 
Over the fields had stained the 

courser's feet; 
Soon the dust drinks that bitter dew, 
— then meet 
The vulture and the wild dog and the 
snake. 
The wolf and the hyena gray, and 
eat 
The dead in horrid truce : their throngs 
did make, 
Behind the steed, a chasm like waves in 
a ship's wake. 



IV. 



For from the utmost realms of earth 
came pouring 
The banded slaves whom every des- 
pot sent 
At that throned traitor's summons; 
like the roaring 
Of fire, whose floods the wild deer 

circumvent 
In the scorcht pastures of the south, 
so bent 
The armies of the leagued kings around 
Their files of steel and flame; — the 
continent 
Trembled, as with a zone of ruin , 

bound, 
Beneath their feet, the sea shook with I 
their navies' sound. 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



203 



V. 

From every nation of the earth they 
came, 
The multitude of moving heartless 
things 
Whom slaves call men : obediently 
they came, 
Like sheep whom from the fold the 

shepherd brings 
To the stall, red with blood; their 
many kings 
Led them thus erring from their native 
land, — 
Tartar and Frank, and millions whom 
the wings 
Of Indian breezes lull, and many a 
band 
The Arctic Anarch sent, and Idumea's 
sand, 

VI. 

Fertile in prodigies and lies. — So 
there 
Strange natures made a brotherhood 
of ill. 
The desert savage ceased to grasp in 
fear 
His Asian shield and bow when, at 

the will 
Of Europe's subtler son, the bolt 
would kill 
Some shepherd sitting on a rock se- 
cure; 
But smiles of wondering joy his face 
would fill, 
And savage sympathy: those slaves 
impure 
Each one the other thus from ill to ill 
did lure. 

VII. 

For traitorously did that foul Tyrant 
robe 

His countenance in lies, — even at 
the hour 
When he was snatcht from death, 
then o'er the globe, 

With secret signs from many a moun- 
tain-tower, 

With smoke by day and fire by night 
the power 



Of kings and priests, those dark con- 
spirators, 
He called : — they knew his cause 
their own, and swore 
Like wolves and serpents to their mu- 
tual wars 
Strange truce, with many a rite which 
Earth and Heaven abhors. 

VIII. 

Myriads had come — millions were on 
their way; 
The Tyrant past, surrounded by 
the steel 
Of hired assassins, through the public 
way, 
Chokt with his country's dead; — 

his footsteps reel 
On the fresh blood — he smiles. 
" Ay, now I feel 
I am a king in truth ! " he said, and 
took 
His royal seat, and bade the tortur- 
ing wheel 
Be brought, and fire, and pincers, and 
the hook, 
And scorpions, that his soul on its re- 
venge might look. 

IX. 

"But first go slay the rebels — why 
return 
The victor bands? " he said. " Mil- 
lions yet live, 
Of whom the weakest with one word 
might turn 
The scales of victory yet; let none 

survive 
But those within the walls — each 
fifth shall give 
The expiation for his brethren, here. — 
Go forth, and waste and kill." — 
" O king, forgive 
My speech," a soldier answered; " but 
we fear 
The spirits of the night, and morn is 
drawing near; 

X. 

" For we were slaying still without 
remorse, ' 



204 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



And now that dreadful chief beneath 
my hand 
Defenceless lay, when on a hell-black 
horse 
An Angel bright as day, waving a 

brand 
Which flasht among the stars, 
past." — " Dost thou stand 
Parleying with me, thou wretch?" 
the king replied. 
"Slaves, bind him to the wheel; 
and of this band 
Whoso will drag that woman to his side 
That scared him thus may burn his dear- 
est foe beside; 



XI. 

"And gold and glory shall be his. — 
Go forth! " 
They rusht into the plain. — Loud 
was the roar 
Of their career : the horsemen shook 
the earth; 
The wheeled artillery's speed the 

pavement tore; 
The infantry, file after file, did pour 
Their clouds on the utmost hills. Five 
days they slew 
Among the wasted fields; the sixth 
saw gore 
Stream through the city; on the sev- 
enth the dew 
Of slaughter became stiff, and there 
was peace anew : 

XII. 

Peace in the desert fields and villages, 

Between the glutted beasts and 

mangled dead ! 

Peace in the silent streets ! save when 

the cries 

Of victims, to their fiery judgment 

led, 
Made pale their voiceless lips who 
seemed to dread, 
Even in their dearest kindred, lest 
some tongue 
Be faithless to the fear yet unbe- 
trayed : 
Peace in the Tyrant's palace, where 
the throng 



Waste the triumphal hours in festival 
and song ! 

XIII. 

Day after day the burning sun rolled ; 

on I 
Over the death-polluted land — it 

came j 

Out of the east like fire, and fiercely j 

shone - 

A lamp of autumn, ripening with its j 

flame j 

The few lone ears of corn; — the I 

sky became j 

Stagnate with heat, so that each cloud \ 
and blast 

Languisht and died, — the thirsting j 

air did claim I 

All moisture, and a rotting vapor past ' 
From the unburied dead, invisible and 
fast. 

XIV. I 

First Want, then Plague, came on the : 
beasts; their food | 

Failed, and they drew the breath ' 
of its decay. 
Millions on millions, whom the scent i 
of blood 
Had lured, or who from regions far I 
away j 

Had tracked the hosts in festival j 
array, ! 

From their dark deserts, gaunt and \ 
wasting now, 
Stalkt like fell shades among their 
perisht prey; 
In their green eyes a strange disease 
did glow. 
They sank in hideous spasm, or pains 
severe and slow. 

XV. 

The fish were poisoned in the streams; 
the birds 
In the green woods perisht; the 
insect race 
Was withered up; the scattered flocks 
and herds 
Who had survived the wild beasts' 
hungry chase 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



205 



Died moaning, each upon the 
other's face 
In helpless agony gazing; round the 
City 
All night the lean hyenas their sad 
case 
Like starving infants wailed — a woe- 
ful ditty ! 
And many a mother wept, pierced with 
unnatural pity. 



XVI. 

Amid the aerial minarets on high 
The Ethiopian vultures fluttering 
fell 
From their long line of brethren in 
the sky. 
Startling the concourse of mankind. 

— Too well 
These signs the coming mischief did 
foretell : — 
Strange panic first, a deep and sicken- 
ing dread. 
Within each heart, like ice, did sink 
and dwell, 
A voiceless thought of evil, which did 
spread 
With the quick glance of eyes, like 
withering lightnings shed. 



XVII. 

Day after day, when the year wanes, 
the frosts 
Strip its green crown of leaves, till 
all is bare; 
So on those strange and congregated 
hosts 
Came Famine, a swift shadow, and 

the air 
Groaned with the burden of a new 
despair; 
Famine, than whom Misrule no dead- 
lier daughter 
Feeds from her thousand breasts, 
though sleeping there 
With lidless eyes lie Faith and Plague 
and Slaughter, 
A ghastly brood conceived of Lethe's 
sullen water. 



XVIII. 

There was no food ; the corn was 
trampled down, 
The flocks and herds had perisht; 
on the shore 
The dead and putrid fish were ever 
thrown : 
The deeps were foodless, and' the 

winds no more 
Creaked with the weight of birds, 
but, as before 
Those winged things sprang forth, 
were void of shade; 
The vines and orchards. Autumn's 
golden store. 
Were burned; so that the meanest 
food was weighed 
With gold, and Avarice died before the 
god it made. 

XIX. 

There was no corn — in the wide 
market-place 
All loathliest things, even human 
flesh, was sold; 
They weighed it in small scales — and 
many a face 
Was fixt in eager horror then; his 

gold 
The miser brought; the tender maid, 
grown bold 
Through hunger, bared her scorned 
charms in vain; 
The mother brought her eldest-born, 
controlled 
By instinct blind as love, but turned 
again, 
And bade her infant suck, and died in 
silent pain. 

XX. 

Then fell blue Plague upon the race 

of man. 
" Oh, for the sheathed steel, so late 

which gave 
Oblivion to the dead when the streets 

ran 
With brothers' blood ! Oh, that the 

earthquake's grave 
Would gape, or ocean lift its stifling 

wave ! " 



206 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



Vain cries — throughout the streets, 
thousands, pursued 
Each by his fiery torture, howl and 
rave, 
Or sit in frenzy's unimagined mood 
Upon fresh heaps of dead — a ghastly 
multitude. 

XXI. 

It was not hunger now, but thirst. 
Each well 
Was choked with rotting corpses, 
and became 
A caldron of green mist made visible 
At sunrise. Thither still the myr- 
iads came, 
Seeking to quench the agony of the 
flame 
Which raged like poison through their 
bursting veins; 
Naked they were from torture, with- 
out shame. 
Spotted with nameless scars and lurid 
blains, 
Childhood, and youth, and age, writhing 
in savage pains. 

XXII. 

It was not thirst but madness ! Many 
saw 
Their own lean image everywhere; 
it went 
A ghastlier self beside them, till the 
awe 
Of that dread sight to self-destruc- 
tion sent 
Those shrieking victims; some, ere 
life was spent, 
Sought, with a horrid sympathy, to 
shed 
Contagion on the sound; and others 
rent 
Their matted hair, and cried aloud, 
"We tread 
On fire! the avenging Power his hell 
on earth has spread ! " 

XXIII. 

Sometimes the living by the dead 
were hid. 



Near the great fountain in the public 
square. 
Where corpses made a crumbUng 
pyramid 
Under the sun, was heard one . 
stifled prayer | 

For life, in the hot silence of the 
air ; 
And strange 't was mid that hideous j 
heap to see ! 

Some shrouded in their long and | 
golden hair, 
As if not dead, but slumbering 
quietly, 
Like forms which sculptors carve, then 
love to agony. 

XXIV. 

Famine had spared the palace of the 
King: — 
He rioted in festival the while, 
He and his guards and priests; but 
Plague did fling 
One shadow upon all. Famine can 

smile 
On him who brings it food, and 
pass, with guile 
Of thankful falsehood, like a courtier 
gray. 
The house-dog of the throne; but 
many a mile 
Comes Plague, a winged wolf, who 
loathes alway 
The garbage and the scum that strangers 
make her prey. 

XXV. 

So, near the throne, amid the gorgeous 
feast, 
Sheathed in resplendent arms, or 
loosely dight 
To luxury, ere the mockery yet had 
ceast 
That lingered on his lips, the 

warrior's might 
Was loosened, and a new and 
ghastlier night 
In dreams of frenzy lapt his eyes; he 
fell 
Headlong, or with stiff eyeballs sate 
upright 



THE REVOLT OE ISLAM. 



207 



Among the guests, or raving mad did 
tell 
Strange truths, a dying seer of dark 
oppression's hell. 

XXVI. 

The Princes and the Priests were pale 
with terror; 
That monstrous faith wherewith they 
ruled mankind 
Fell, like a shaft loosed by the bow- 
man's error, 
On their own hearts : they sought, 

and they could find 
No refuge — 'twas the blind who 
led the blind. 
So through the desolate streets to the 
high fane 
The many-tongued and endless 
armies wind 
In sad procession: each among the 
train 
To his own Idol lifts his supplications 
vain. 

XXVII. 

"O God!" they cried, "we know 
our secret pride 
Has scorned thee, and thy worship, 
and thy name; 
Secure in human power, we have 
defied 
Thy fearful night; we bend in fear 

and shame 
Before thy presence; with the dust 
we claim 
Kindred ; be merciful, O King of 
Heaven ! 
Most justly have we suffered for thy 
fame 
Made dim, but be at length our sins 
forgiven, 
Ere to despair and death thy worship- 
pers be driven. 

XXVIII. 

"O King of glory! thou alone hast 
power ! 
Who can resist thy will? who can 
restrain 



Thy wrath when on the guilty thou 
dost shower 
The shafts of thy revenge, a blister- 
ing rain? 
Greatest and best, be merciful again ! 
Have we not stabbed thine enemies? 
and made 
The Earth an altar, and the Heavens 
a fane. 
Where thou wert worshipt with their 
blood, and laid 
Those hearts in dust which would thy 
searchless works have weighed? 

XXIX. 

*' Well didst thou loosen on this im- 
pious City 
Thine angels of revenge : recall 
them now; 
Thy worshippers, abased, here kneel 
for pity. 
And bind their souls by an immor- 
tal vow : 
We swear by thee ! and to our oath 
do thou 
Give sanction from thine hell of fiends 
and flame, 
That we will kill with fire and tor- 
ments slow 
The last of those who mockt thy holy 
name. 
And scorned the sacred laws thy 
prophets did proclaim." 

XXX. / 

Thus they with trembling limbs and 
pallid lips 
Worshipt their own hearts' image, 
dim and vast, 
Scared by the shade wherewith they 
would eclipse 
The light of other minds; — troubled 

they past 
From the great Temple; — fiercely 
still and fast 
The arrows of the plague among them 
fell, 
And they on one another gazed 
aghast. 
And through the hosts contention 
wild befel, 



208 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



As each of his own god the wondrous 
works did tell. 

XXXI. 

And Oromaze, Joshua, and Mahomet, 

Moses and Buddh, Zerdusht and 

Brahm and Foh, 

A tumult of strange names, which 

never met 

Before as watchwords of a single 

woe, 
Arose; each raging votary 'gan to 
throw 
Aloft his armed hands, and each did 
howl 
"Our God alone is God! " — And 
slaughter now 
Would have gone forth, when from 
beneath a cowl 
A voice came forth which pierced like 
ice through every soul. 

XXXII. 

'Twas an Iberian priest from whom it 
came, 
A zealous man who led the legioned 
West, 
With words which faith and pride had 
steeped in flame, 
To quell the unbelievers ; a dire 

guest 
Even to his friends was he, for in 
his breast 
Did hate and guile lie watchful, inter- 
twined, 
Twin serpents in one deep and 
winding nest; 
He loathed all faith beside his own, 
and pined 
To wreak his fear of Heaven in ven- 
geance on mankind. 

XXXIII. 

But more he loathed and hated the 
clear light 
Of wisdom and free thought, and 
more did fear 
Lest, kindled once, its beams might 
pierce the night, 
Even where his Idol stood; for far 
and near 



Did many a heart in Europe leap to 
hear 
That faith and tyranny were trampled 
down; 
Many a pale victim doomed for truth 
to share 
The murderer's cell, or see with help- 
less groan 
The priests his children drag for slaves 
to serve their own. 

XXXIV. 

He dared not kill the infidels with fire 
Or steel, in Europe; the slow ago- 
nies 
Of legal torture mockt his keen de- 
sire: 
So he made truce with those who 

did despise 
The expiation and the sacrifice, 
That, though detested, Islam's kindred 
creed 
Might crush for him those deadlier 
enemies; 
For fear of God did in his bosom 
breed 
A jealous hate of man, an unreposing 
need. 

XXXV. 

" Peace, peace ! " he cried. "When 
we are dead, the day 
Of judgment comes, and all shall 
surely know 
Whose God is God, each fearfully 
shall pay 
The errors of his faith in endless 

woe ! 
But there is sent a mortal vengeance 
now 
On earth, because an impious race 
had spurned 
Him whom we all adore, — a subtle 
foe, 
By whom for ye this dread reward was 
earned, 
And kingly thrones, which rest on faith, 
nigh overturned. 

XXXVI. 

" Think ye, because ye weep and kneel 
and pray, 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



2og 



That God will lull the pestilence? 
It rose 
Even from beneath his throne, where, 
many a day, 
His mercy soothed it to a dark re- 
pose: 
It walks upon the earth to judge his 
foes; 
And what are thou and I, that he should 
deign 
To curb his ghastly minister, or close 
The gates of death ere they receive the 
twain 
Who shook with mortal spells his unde- 
fended reign? 

XXXVII. 

*'Ay, there is famine in the gulf of 
hell, 
Its giant worms of fire for ever 
yawn, — 
Their lurid eyes are on us ! Those 
who fell 
By the swift shafts of pestilence ere 

dawn 
Are in their jaws ! They hunger for 
the spawn 
Of Satan, their own brethren who 
were sent 
To make our souls their spoil. See ! 
see ! they fawn 
Like dogs, and they will sleep, with 
luxury spent, 
When those detested hearts their iron 
fangs have rent ! 

XXXVIII. 

*' Our God may then lull Pestilence to 

sleep: 

Pile high the pyre of expiation now, 

A forest's spoil of boughs, and on the 

heap 

Pour venomous gums, which sullenly 

and slow. 
When touched by flame, shall burn 
and melt and flow, 
A stream of clinging fire, — and fix 
on high 
A net of iron, and spread forth be- 
low 
A couch of snakes and scorpions, and 
the fry 



Of centipedes and worms, earth's hell- 
ish progeny. 

XXXIX. 

*' Let Laon and Laone on that pyre, 
Linkt tight with burning Inass, 
perish ! — then pray 
That, with this sacrifice, the withering 
ire 
Of Heaven maybe appeased." He 

ceased, and they 
A space stood silent, as far, far away 
The echoes of his voice among them 
died ; 
And he knelt down upon the dust, 
alway 
Muttering the curses of his speechless 
pride, 
Whilst shame and fear and awe the 
armies did divide. 

XL. 

His voice was like a blast that burst 
the portal 
Of fabled hell; and, as he spake, 
each one 
Saw gape beneath the chasms of fire 
immortal. 
And Heaven above seemed cloven, 

where, on a throne 
Girt round with storms and shadows., 
sate alone 
Their King and Judge. — Fear killed in 
every breast 
All natural pity then, a fear un- 
known 
Before, and, with an inward fire pos- 
sest. 
They raged like homeless beasts whom 
burning woods invest. 

XLI. 

'Twas morn. — At noon the public 
crier went forth. 
Proclaiming through the living and 
the dead, 
"The Monarch saith that his great 
empire's worth 
Is set on Laon and Laone's head: 
He who but one yet living here can 
lead, 



2ro 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



Or who the life from both their hearts 
can wring, 
Shall be the kingdom's heir — a glo- 
rious meed ! 
But he who both alive can hither 
bring 
The Princess shall espouse, and reign 
an equal King." 

XLII. 

Ere night the pyre was piled, the net 
of iron 
Was spread above, the fearful couch 
below; 
It overtopt the towers that did en- 
viron 
That spacious square, for Fear is 

never slow 
To build the thrones of Hate, her 
mate and foe. 
So she scourged forth the maniac mul- 
titude 
To rear this pyramid — tottering and 
slow. 
Plague-stricken, foodless, like lean 
herds pursued 
By gadflies, they have piled the heath 
and gums and wood. 

XLIII. 

Night came, a starless and a moonless 
gloom. 
Until the dawn, those hosts of many 
a nation 
Stood round that pile, as near one 
lover's tomb 
Two gentle sisters mourn their deso- 
lation : 
And in the silence of that expecta- 
tion 
Was heard on high the reptiles' hiss 
and crawl — 
It was so deep — save when the 
devastation 
Of the swift pest, with fearful interval. 
Marking its path with shrieks, among 
the crowd would fall. 

XLIV, 

Morn came, — among those sleepless 
multitudes, 



Madness, and Fear, and Plague, and 
Famine, still 
Heapt corpse on corpse, as in au- 
tumnal woods 
The frosts of many a wind with 

dead leaves fill 
Earth's cold and sullen brooks; in 
silence, still 
The pale survivors stood ; ere noon, 
the fear 
Of Hell became a panic, which did 
kill 
Like hunger or disease, with whispers 
drear, 
As " Hush ! hark ! Come they yet? Just 
Heaven ! thine hour is near ! " 

XLV. 

And priests rushed through their 
ranks, some counterfeiting 
The rage they did inspire, some 
mad indeed 
With their own lies; they said their 
god was waiting 
To see his enemies writhe and burn 

and bleed, — 
And that, till then, the snakes of 
hell had need 
Of human souls: — three hundred 
furnaces 
Soon blazed through the wide City, 
where, with speed, 
Men brought their infidel kindred to 
appease 
God's wrath, and, while they burned, 
knelt round on quivering knees. 

XLVI. 

The noontide sun was darkened with 
that smoke. 
The winds of eve disperst those 
ashes gray. 
The madness which these rites had 
lulled awoke 
Again at sunset. — Who shall dare 

to say 
The deeds which night and fear 
brought forth, or weigh 
In balance just the good and evil 
there ? 
He might man's deep and search- 
less heart display, 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



211 



And cast a light on those dim laby- 
rinths where 
Hope near imagined chasms is strug- 
gling with despair. 

XLVII. 

'T is said, a mother dragged three 
children then 
To those fierce flames which roast 
the eyes in the head, 
And laught and died; and that un- 
holy men, 
Feasting like fiends upon the infidel 

dead, 
Looked from their meal, and saw 
an Angel tread 
The visible floor of heaven, and it was 
she ! 
And on that night one without 
doubt or dread 
Came to the fire and said, "Stop, I 
am he ! 
Kill me!" — They burned them both 
with hellish mockery. 

XLVIII. 

And one by one, that night, young 
maidens came. 
Beauteous and calm, like shapes of 
living stone 
Clothed in the light of dreams, and 
by the flame, 
Which shrank as overgorged, they 

laid them down, 
And sung a low sweet song, of 
which alone 
One word was heard, and that was 
Liberty; 
And that some kist their marble 
feet, with moan 
Like love, and died; and then that 
they did die 
With happy smiles, which sunk in white 
tranquillity. 

CANTO XI. 

I. 

She saw me not — she heard me not 
— alone 
Upon the mountain's dizzy brink she 
stood; 



She spake not, breathed not, moved 
not — there was thrown 
Over her look the shadow of a mood 
Which only clothes the heart in 
solitude, 
A thought of voiceless depth; — she 
stood alone; 
Above, the heavens were spread; — 
below, the flood 
Was murmuring in its caves ; — the 
wind had blown 
Her hair apart, through which her eyes 
and forehead shone. 



A cloud was hanging o'er the western 
mountains; 
Before its blue and moveless depth 
were flying 
Gray mists poured forth from the un- 
resting fountains 
Of darkness in the north : — the 

day was dying : — 
Sudden, the sun shone forth, its 
beams were lying 
Like boiling gold on ocean, strange 
to see. 
And on the shattered vapors which, 
defying 
The power of light in vain, tost 
restlessly 
In the red Heaven, like wrecks in a 
tempestuous sea. 

III. 

It was a stream of living beams, whose 
bank 
On either side by the cloud's cleft 
was made; 
And, where its chasms that flood of 
glory drank. 
Its waves gusht forth like fire, and, 

as if swayed 
By some mute tempest rolled on 
her : the shade 
Of her bright image floated on the 
river 
Of liquid light, which then did end 
and fade — 
Her radiant shape upon its verge did 
shiver; 



>I2 THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 


Aloft, her flowing hair like strings of 


Which now the cold winds stole; — 


flame did quiver. 


she would have laid 




Upon my languid heart her dearest 




head; 


IV. 


I might have heard her voice, tender 


I stood beside her, but she saw me 


and sweet; 


not — 


Her eyes, mingling with mine, might 


She lookt upon the sea, and skies. 


soon have fed 


and earth; 


My soul with their own joy. — One 


Rapture and love and admiration 
wrought 


moment yet 


I gazed — we parted then, never again 


A passion deeper far than tears or 


to meet ! 


mirth, 




Or speech or gesture, or whate'er 


VII. 


has birth 




From common joy; which with the 


Never but once to meet on Earth 


speechless feeling 


again ! 


That led her there united, and shot 


She heard me as I fled — her eager 


forth 


tone 


From her far eyes a light of deep re- 


Sunk on my heart, and almost wove 


vealing, 


a chain 


All but her dearest self from my regard 


Around my will to link it with her 


concealing. 


own. 




So that my stern resolve was almost 


V. 


gone. 




"I cannot reach thee! whither dost 


Her lips were parted, and the measured 


thou fly? 


breath 


My steps are faint. — Come back, 


Was now heard there; — her dark 


thou dearest one — 


and intricate eyes. 


Return, ah me! return!" The wind 


Orb within orb, deeper than sleep or 


past by 


death, 


On which those accents died, faint, far, 


Absorbed the glories of the burning 


and lingeringly. 


skies. 




Which, mingling with her heart's 


VIII. 


deep ecstasies. 




Burst from her looks and gestures; — 


Woe ! Woe ! that moonless midnight ! 


and a light 


— Want and Pest 


Of liquid tenderness, like love, did 


Were horrible, but one more fell 


rise 


doth rear, 


From her whole frame, — an atmos- 


As in a hydra's swarming lair, its crest 


phere which quite 


Eminent among those victims — 


Arrayed her in its beams, tremulous and 


even the Fear 


soft and bright. 


Of Hell : each girt by the hot 




atmosphere 


VI. 


Of his blind agony, like a scorpion 




stung 


She would have claspt me to her glow- 


By his own rage upon his burning 


ing frame; 


bier 


Those warm and odorous lips might 


Of circling coals of fire; but still 


soon have shed 


there clung 


On mine the fragrance and the invisi- 


One hope, like a keen sword on starting 


ble flame 


threads uphung : — 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



21 



IX. 

Not death — death was no more refuge 
or rest; 
Not life — it was despair to be ! — 
not sleep, 
For fiends and chasms of fire had dis- 
possest 
All natural dreams; to wake was 

not to weep, 
But to gaze, mad and pallid, at the 
leap 
To which the Future, like a snaky 
scourge, 
Or like some tyrant's eye which aye 
doth keep 
Its withering beam upon its slaves, 
did urge 
Their steps : — they heard the roar of 
Hell's sulphureous surge. 



Each of that multitude, alone, and 
lost 
To sense of outward things, one 
hope yet knew; 
As on a foam-girt crag some seaman 
tost 
Stares at the rising tide, or like the 

crew 
Whilst now the ship is splitting 
through and through; 
Each, if the tramp of a far steed was 
heard, 
Started from sick despair, or if there 
flew 
One murmur on the wind, or if some 
word. 
Which none can gather yet, the distant 
crowd has stirred. 

XI. 

Why became cheeks, wan with the 
kiss of death. 

Paler from hope? they had sustained 
despair. 
Why watcht those myriads with sus- 
pended breath, 

Sleepless a second night? They 
are not here. 

The victims, and hour by hour, a 
vision drear, 



Warm corpses fall upon the clay-cold 
dead; 
And even in death their lips are 
writhed with fear. — 
The crowd is mute and moveless — 
overhead 
Silent Arcturus shines — " Ha ! hear'st 
thou not the tread 

XII. 

" Of rushing feet? laughter? the shout, 
the scream 
Of triumph not to be contained? 
See ! hark ! 
They come, they come ! give way!" 
Alas, ye deem 
Falsely — 'tis but a crowd of mani- 
acs stark, 
Driven, like a troop of spectres, 
through the dark 
From the chokt well, whence a bright 
death-fire sprung, 
A lurid earth-star which dropt many 
a spark 
From its blue train, and, spreading 
widely, clung 
To their wild hair, like mist the top- 
most pines among. 

XIII. 

And many, from the crowd collected 

there, 

Joined that strange dance in fearful 

sympathies; 

There was the silence of a long despair 

When the last echo of those terrible 

cries 
Came from a distant street, like 
agonies 
Stifled afar. — Before the Tyrant's 
throne 
All night his aged senate sate, their 
eyes 
In stony expectation fixt; when one 
Sudden before them stood, a Stranger 
and alone. 



XIV. 

Dark priests and haughty warriors 
gazed on him 



214 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



With baffled wonder, for a hermit's 
vest 
Concealed his face; but, when he 
spake, his tone, 
Ere yet the matter did their thoughts 

arrest, — 
Earnest, benignant, calm, as from a 
breast 
Void of all hate or terror — made them 
start ; 
For, as with gentle accents he ad- 
drest 
His speech to them, on each unwilling 
heart 
Unusual awe did fall — a spirit-quelling 
dart. 

XV. 

•* Ye Princes of the Earth, ye sit 
aghast 
Amid the ruin which yourselves have 
made, 
Yes, Desolation heard your trumpet's 
blast. 
And sprang from sleep ! — dark Ter- 
ror has obeyed 
Your bidding. Oh that I, whom ye 
have made 
Your foe, could set my dearest enemy 
free 
From pain and fear ! But evil casts 
a shade 
Which cannot pass so soon, and Hate 
must be 
The nurse and parent still of an ill pro- 
geny. 

XVI. 

** Ye turn to Heaven for aid in your 
distress; 
Alas ! that ye, the mighty and the 
wise. 
Who, if ye dared, might not aspire 
to less 
Than ye conceive of power, should 

fear the lies 
Which thou, and thou, didst frame 
for mysteries 
To blind your slaves : — consider your 
own thought. 
An empty and a cruel sacrifice 
Ye now prepare for a vain idol wrought 



Out of the fears and hate which vain 
desires have brought. 



XVII. 

"Ye seek for happiness — alas the 
day ! 
Ye find it not in luxury nor in gold. 
Nor in the fame, nor in the envied 
sway, 
For which, O willing slaves to Cus- 
tom old, 
Severe taskmistress, ye your hearts 
have sold. 
Ye seek for peace, and, when ye die, 
to dream 
No evil dreams: all mortal things 
are cold 
And senseless then; if aught survive, 
I deem 
It must be love and joy, for they im- 
mortal seem. 



XVIII. 

"Fear not the future, weep not for the 
past. 
Oh could I win your ears to dare 
be now 
Glorious and great and calm ! that ye 
would cast 
Into the dust those symbols of your 

woe. 
Purple, and gold, and steel ! that ye 
would go 
Proclaiming to the nations whence ye 
came 
That Want, and Plague, and Fear, 
from slavery flow; 
And that mankind is free, and that the 
shame 
Of royalty and faith is lost in freedom's 
fame ! 

XIX. 

" If thus, 'tis well: if not, I come to 
say 
That Laon — " while the Stranger 
spoke, among 
The council sudden tumult and affray 
Arose, for many of those warriors 
young 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



215 



Had on his eloquent accents fed and 
hung 
Like bees on mountain-flowers : they 
knew the truth, 
And from their thrones in vindica- 
tion sprung; 
The men of faith and law then with- 
out ruth 
Drew forth their secret steel, and stabbed 
each ardent youth. 



XX. 

They stabbed them in the back, and 
sneered — a slave 
Who stood behind the throne those 
corpses drew 
Each to its bloody, dark, and secret 
*) grave; 

b And one more daring raised his steel 

anew 
To pierce the Stranger. " What 
hast thou to do 
With me, poor wretch?" Calm, sol- 
emn, and severe. 
That voice unstrung his sinews, and 
he threw 
His dagger on the ground, and, pale 
with fear, 
Sate silently — his voice then did the 
Stranger rear. 



XXI. 

*' It doth avail not that I weep for 
ye — 
Ye cannot change, since ye are old 
and gray. 
And ye have chosen your lot — your 
fame must be 
A book of blood, whence in a milder 

day 
Men shall learn truth, when ye are 
wrapt in clay : 
Now ye shall triumph. I am Laon's 
friend. 
And him to your revenge will I be- 
tray. 
So ye concede one easy boon. Attend! 
For now I speak of things which ye can 
apprehend. 



XXII. 

" There is a People mighty in its youth, 
A land beyond the Oceans of the 
West, 
Where, though with rudest rites. Free- 
dom and Truth 
Are worshipt. From a glorious 

Mother's breast 
Who, since high Athens fell, among 
the rest 
Sate like the Queen of Nations, but 
in woe. 
By inbred monsters outraged and 
opprest, 
Turns to her chainless child for succor 
now, 
It draws the milk of Power in Wisdom's 
fullest flow. 



XXIII. 

** That land is like an eagle whose 
young gaze 
Feeds on the noontide beam, whose 
golden plume 
Floats moveless on the storm, and in 
the blaze 
Of sunrise gleams when Earth is 

wrapt in gloom; 
An epitaph of glory for the tomb 
Of murdered Europe may thy fame be 
made, 
Great People ! As the sands shalt 
thou become; 
Thy growth is swift as morn when 
night must fade; 
The multitudinous Earth shall sleep be- 
neath thy shade. 



XXIV. 

** Yes, in the desert, then, is built a 
home 
For Freedom ! Genius is made strong 
to rear 
The monuments of man beneath the 
dome 
Of a new Heaven; myriads assem- 
ble there 
Whom the proud lords of man, in 
rage or fear, 



;i6 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



Drive from their wasted homes: the 
boon I pray 
Is this — that Cythna shall be con- 
voyed there, — 
Nay, start not at the name — America ! 
And then to you this night Laon will I 
betray. 

XXV. 

** With me do what you will. I am 
your foe ! " 
The light of such a joy as makes the 
stare 
Of hungry snakes like living emeralds 
glow 
Shone in a hundred human eyes. — 

" Where, where 
Is Laon? Haste! fly! drag him 
swiftly here ! 
We grant thy boon." — "I put no 
trust in ye; 
Swear by the Power ye dread." — 
*' We swear, we swear ! " 
The Stranger threw his vest back sud- 
denly, 
And smiled in gentle pride, and said, 
"Lo! I am he!" 



CANTO XII. 



The transport of a fierce and mon- 
strous gladness 
Spread through the multitudinous 
streets, fast flying 
Upon the winds of fear; from his dull 
madness 
The starveling waked, and died in 

joy; the dying. 
Among the corpses in stark agony 
lying, 
Just heard the happy tidings, and in 
hope 
Closed their faint eyes; from house 
to house replying 
With loud acclaim, the living shook 
Heaven's cope, 
And filled the startled Earth with 
echoes: morn did ope 



II. 

Its pale eyes then; and lo ! the long 
array 
Of guards in golden arms, and 
priests beside. 
Singing their bloody hymns, whose 
garbs betray 
The blackness of the faith it seems 

to hide; 
And see the Tyrant's gem-wrought 
chariot glide 
Among the gloomy cowls and glitter- 
ing spears — 
A Shape of light is sitting by his side, 
A child most beautiful. 1' the midst 
appears 
Laon — exempt alone from mortal hopes 
and fears. 

III. 

His head and feet are bare, his hands 
are bound 
Behind with heavy chains, yet none 
do wreak 
Their scoffs on him, though myriads 
throng around; 
There are no sneers upon his lip 

which speak 
That scorn or hate has made him 
bold; his cheek 
Resolve has not turned pale — his eyes 
are mild 
And calm, and, like the morn about 
to break. 
Smile on mankind — his heart seems 
reconciled 
To all things and itself, like a reposing 
child. 



IV. 



4 



Tumult was in the soul of all beside, 
111 joy, or doubt, or fear; but those 
who saw 
Their tranquil victim pass felt wonder 
glide 
Into their brain, and became calm 

with awe. — 
See, the slow pageant near the pile 
doth draw. 
A thousand torches in the spacious 
square, 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



217 



Borne by the ready slaves of ruth- 
less law, 
Await the signal round : the morning 
fair 
Is changed to a dim night by that un- 
natural glare. 



And see, beneath a sun-bright canopy. 

Upon a platform level with the pile, 

The anxious Tyrant sit, enthroned on 

high, 

Girt by the chieftains of the host : 

all smile 
In expectation, but one child: the 
while 
I, Laon, led by mutes, ascend my bier 
Of fire, and look around: each dis- 
tant isle 
Is dark in the bright dawn; towers far 
and near 
Pierce like reposing flames the tremu- 
lous atmosphere. 

VI. 

There was such silence through the 
host as when 
An earthquake, trampling on some 
populous town. 
Has crusht ten thousand with one 
tread, and men 
Expect the second; all were mute 

but one. 
That fairest child, who, bold with 
love, alone 
Stood up before the King, without 
avail 
Pleading for Laon's life — her stifled 
groan 
Was heard — she trembled like one 
aspen pale 
Among the gloomy pines of a Norwe- 
gian vale. 

VII. 

What were his thoughts, linkt in the 

morning sun 
Among those reptiles, stingless with 

delay. 
Even like a tyrant's wrath? — The 

signal -gun 



Roared — hark, again ! In that 

dread pause he lay 
As in a quiet dream — the slaves 
obey — 
A thousand torches drop, — and hark ! 
the last 
Bursts on that awful silence; far 
away, 
Millions, with hearts that beat both 
loud and fast. 
Watch for the springing flame expectant 
and aghast. 

VIII. 

They fly — the torches fall — a cry of 
fear 
Has startled the triumphant ! — they 
recede ! 
For, ere the cannon's roar has died, 
they hear 
The tramp of hoofs like earthquake, 

and a steed. 
Dark and gigantic, with the tem- 
pest's speed 
Bursts through their ranks: a woman 
sits thereon. 
Fairer, it seems, than aught that 
earth can breed. 
Calm, radiant, like the phantom of the 
dawn, 
A spirit from the caves of daylight wan- 
dering gone. 



IX. 



All thought it was God's Angel come 
to sweep 
The lingering guilty to their fiery 
grave; 
The Tyrant from his throne in dread 
did leap, — 
Her innocence his child from fear 

did save; 
Scared by the faith they feigned, 
each priestly slave 
Knelt for his mercy whom they served 
with blood, 
And, like the refluence of a mighty 
wave 
Suckt into the loud sea, the multi- 
tude 
With crushing panic fled in terror's 
altered mood. 



2lS 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



X. 



They pause, they blush, they gaze; — 
a gathering shout 
Bursts, like one sound from the ten 
thousand streams 
Of a tempestuous sea: — that sudden 
rout 
One checked who never in his 

mildest dreams 
Felt awe from grace or loveliness, 
the seams 
Of his rent heart so hard and cold a 
creed 
Had seared with blistering ice : — 
but he misdeems 
That he is wise whose wounds do 
only bleed 
Inly for self; thus thought the Iberian 
Priest indeed, 



XI. 

And others too thought he was wise 
to see 
In pain and fear and hate some- 
thing divine; 
In love and beauty, no divinity. 

Now with a bitter smile, whose light 

did shine 
Like a fiend's hope upon his lips 
and eyne. 
He said, and the persuasion of that 
sneer 
Rallied his trembjing comrades — 
" Is it mine 
To stand alone, when kings and 

soldiers fear 
A woman? Heaven has sent its other 
victim here." 



XII. 

"Were it not impious," said the 
King, " to break 

Our holy oath?" — "Impious to 
keep it, say ! " 
Shrieked the exulting Priest. " Slaves, 
to the stake 

Bind her, and on my head the bur- 
den lay 

Of her just torments : — at the 
Judgment-day 



Will I stand up before the golden 
throne 
Of heaven, and cry, 'To thee did 
I betray 
An Infidel ! but for me she would 
have known 
Another moment's joy! — the glory be 
thine own ! ' " 

XIII. 

They trembled, but replied not, nor 
obeyed, 
Pausing in breathless silence. 
Cythna sprung 
From her gigantic steed, who, like a 
shade 
Chased by the winds, those vacant 

streets among 
Fled tameless, as the brazen rein 
she flung 
Upon his neck, and kist his mooned 
brow. 
A piteous sight, that one so fair and 
young 
The clasp of such a fearful death 
should woo 
With smiles of tender joy, as beamed 
from Cythna now. 

XIV. 

The warm tears burst in spite of faith 
and fear 
From many a tremulous eye, but, 
like soft dews 
Which feed Spring's earliest buds, 
hung gathered there, 
Frozen by doubt, — alas ! they could 

not choose 
But weep; for, when her faint 
limbs did refuse 
To climb the pyre, upon the mutes 
she smiled; 
And with her eloquent gestures^ 
and the hues 
Of her quick lips, even as a weary 
child 
Wins sleep from some fond nurse with 
its caresses mild, 

XV. 

She won them, though unwilling, her 
to bind 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



219 



Near me, among the snakes. When 
there had fled 
One soft reproach that was most 
thrilling kind, 
She smiled on me, and nothing then 

we said, 
But each upon the other's counte- 
nance fed 
Looks of insatiate love; the mighty 
veil 
Which doth divide the living and 
the dead 
Was almost rent, the world grew dim 
and pale, — 
All light in Heaven or Earth beside our 
love did fail. 

XVI. 

Yet — yet — one brief relapse, like 
the last beam 
Of dying flames, the stainless air 
around 
Hung silent and serene — a blood-red 
gleam 
Burst upwards, hurling fiercely from 

the ground 
The globed smoke ; I heard the 
mighty sound 
Of its uprise, like a tempestuous 
ocean ; 
And through its chasms I saw as 
in a swound 
The Tyrant's child fall without life or 
motion 
Before his throne, subdued by some 
unseen emotion. — 

XVII. 

And is this death ? — The pyre has 
disappeared. 
The Pestilence, the Tyrant, and the 
throng; 
The flames grow silent — slowly there 
is heard 
The music of a breath -suspending 

song, 
Which, like the kiss of love when 
life is young. 
Steeps the faint eyes in darkness sweet 
and deep; 
With ever-changing notes it floats 
along, 



Till on my passive soul there seemed 
to creep 
A melody, like waves on wrinkled sands 
that leap. 

XVIII. 

The warm touch of a soft and tremu- 
lous hand 
Wakened me then; lo ! Cythna sate 
reclined 
Beside me, on the waved and golden 
sand 
Of a clear pool, upon a bank o'er- 

twined 
With strange and star-bright flowers 
which to the wind 
Breathed divine odor ; high above 
was spread 
The emerald heaven of trees of un- 
known kind. 
Whose moonlike blooms and bright 
fruit overhead 
A shadow which was light upon the 
waters shed. 

XIX. 

And round about sloped many a lawny 

mountain. 
With incense-bearing forests, and vast 

caves 
Of marble radiance, to that mighty 
fountain; 
And, where the flood its own bright 

margin laves. 
Their echoes talk with its eternal 
waves, 
Which from the depths whose jagged 
caverns breed 
Their unreposing strife it lifts and 
heaves, — 
Till through a chasm of hills they roll, 
and feed 
A river deep, which flies with smooth 
but arrowy speed. 

XX. 

As we sate gazing in a trance of 

wonder, 
A b-"-^ rpT-roacht, borne by the 
musical air 



220 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



Along the waves which sung and 
sparkled under 
Its rapid keel — a winged shape 

sate there, 
A child with silver-shining wings, 
so fair 
That, as her bark did through the 
waters glide, 
The shadow of the lingering waves 
did wear 
Light, as from starry beams; from 
side to side 
While veering to the wind her plumes 
the bark did guide. 

XXI. 

The boat was one curved shell of 
hollow pearl. 
Almost translucent with the light 
divine 
Of her within; the prow and stern did 
curl. 
Horned on high, like the young 

moon supine. 
When o'er dim twilight mountains 
dark with pine 
It floats upon the sunset's sea of 
beams. 
Whose golden waves in many a 
purple line 
Fade fast, till, borne on sunlight's 
ebbing streams. 
Dilating, on earth's verge the sunken 
meteor gleams. 

XXII. 

Its keel has struck the sands beside 
our feet. — 
Then Cythna turned to me, and 
from her eyes. 
Which swam with unshed tears, a look 
more sweet 
Than happy love, a wild and glad 

surprise, 
Glanced as she spake: "Ay, this 
is Paradise, 
And not a dream, and we are all 
united ! 
Lo ! that is mine own child, who in 
the guise 
Of madness came, like day to one 
benighted 



In lonesome woods; my heart is now 
too well requited ! " 

XXIII. 

And then she wept aloud, and in her 
arms 
Clasped that bright Shape, less mar- 
vellously fair 
Than her own human hues and living 
charms; 
Which, as she leaned in passion's 

silence there. 
Breathed warmth on the cold bosom 
of the air, 
Which seemed to blush and tremble 
with delight; 
The glossy darkness of her stream- 
ing hair 
Fell o'er that snowy child, and 
wrapt from sight 
The fond and long embrace which did 
their hearts unite. 

XXIV. 

Then the bright child, the plumed 
Seraph, came. 
And fixt its blue and beaming eyes 
on mine. 
And said : " I was disturbed by tremu- 
lous shame 
When first we met, yet knew that I 

was thine, 
From the same hour in which thy 
lips divine 
Kindled a clinging dream within my 
brain, 
Which ever waked when I might 
sleep, to twine 
Thine image with her memory dear — 
again 
We meet; exempted now from mortal 
fear or pain. 

XXV. 

*' When the consuming flames had 
wrapt ye round, 
The hope which I had cherisht 
went away; 
I fell in agony on the senseless ground, 
And hid mine eyes in dust, and far 
astray 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



221 



My mind was gone, when, bright 
like dawning day, 
The Spectre of the Plague before me 
flew, 
And breathed upon my lips, and 
seemed to say, 
' They wait for thee, beloved ! ' — then 
I knew 
The death-mark on my breast, and be- 
came calm anew. 

XXVI. 

"It was the calm of love — for I was 
dying. 
I saw the black and half-extin- 
guished pyre 
In its own gray and shrunken ashes 
lying; 
The pitchy smoke of the departed 

fire 
Still hung in many a hollow dome 
and spire 
Above the towers, like night; beneath 
whose shade, 
Awed by the ending of their own 
desire, 
The armies stood; a vacancy was 
made 
In expectation's depth, and so they 
stood dismayed. 

XXVII. 

"The frightful silence of that altered 
mood 
The tortures of the dying clove alone, 
Till one uprose among the multitude, 
And said : ' The flood of time is 

rolling on; 
We stand upon its brink, whilst they 
are gone 
To glide in peace down death's mys- 
terious stream. 
Have ye done well? They moulder, 
flesh and bone. 
Who might have made this life's en- 
venomed dream 
A sweeter draught than ye will ever 
taste, I deem. 

XXVIII. 

** ' These perish as the good and great 
of yore 



Have perisht, and their murderers 
will repent. 
Yes, vain and barren tears shall flow 
before 
Yon smoke has faded from the firma- 
ment, — 
Even for this cause, that ye, who 
must lament 
The death of those that made this 
world so fair, 
Cannot recal them now; but there 
is lent 
To man the wisdom of a high despair 
When such can die, and he live on and 
linger here. 

XXIX. 

"'Ay, ye may fear — not now the 
Pestilence, 
From fabled hell as by a charm 
withdrawn, — 
All power and faith must pass, since 
calmly hence 
In pain and fire have unbelievers 

gone; 
And ye must sadly turn away, and 
moan 
In secret, to his home each one return- 

And to long ages shall this hour be 
known; 
And slowly shall its memory, ever 
burning, • 
Fill this dark night of things with an 
eternal morning. 

XXX. 

"'For me the world is grown too 

void and cold. 

Since hope pursues immortal destiny 

With steps thus slow — therefore shall 

ye behold 

How those who love, yet fear not, 

dare to die; 
Tell to your children this ! ' Then 
suddenly 
He sheathed a dagger in his heart, and 
fell; 
My brain grew dark in death, and 
yet to me 
There came a murmur from the crowd 
to tell 



222 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



Of deep and mighty change which sud- 
denly befel. 

XXXI. 

"Then suddenly I stood, a winged 
Thought, 
Before the immortal Senate, and the 
seat 
Of that star-shining Spirit, whence is 
wrought 
The strength of its dominion, good 

and great. 
The better Genius of this world's 
estate. 
His realm around one. mighty Fane is 
spread, 
Elysian islands bright and fortunate. 
Calm dwellings of the free and happy 
dead, 
Where I am sent to lead." These 
winged words she said, 

XXXII. 

And with the silence of her eloquent 

smile 

Bade us embark in her divine canoe. 

Then at the helm we took our seat, 

the while 

Above her head those plumes of 

dazzling hue 
Into the wind's invisible stream she 
threw, 
Sitting beside the prow : like gossamer 
On the swift breath of morn, the 
vessel flew 
O'er the bright whirlpools of that 
fountain fair. 
Whose shores receded fast whilst we 
seemed lingering there. 

XXXIII. 

Till down that mighty stream, dark, 
calm, and fleet. 

Between a chasm of cedarn moun- 
tains riven, 
Chased by the thronging winds whose 
viewless feet. 

As swift as twinkling beams, had 
under Heaven 

From woods and waves wild sounds 
and odors driven, 



The boat fled visibly — three nights 
and days, 
Borne like a cloud through morn, 
and noon, and even. 
We sailed along the winding watery 
ways 
Of the vast stream, a long and laby^ 
rinthine maze. 

XXXIV. 

A scene of joy and wonder to behold 
That river's shapes and shadows 
changing ever. 
When the broad sunrise filled with 
deepening gold 
Its whirlpools where all hues did 

spread and quiver. 
And where melodious falls did burst 
and shiver 
Among rocks clad with flowers, the 
foam and spray 
Sparkled like stars upon the sunny 
river; 
Or, when the moonlight poured a 
holier day. 
One vast and glittering lake around 
green islands lay. 

XXXV. 

Morn, noon, and even, that boat of 
pearl outran 
The streams which bore it, like the 
arrowy cloud 
Of tempest, or the speedier thought 
of man 
Which flieth forth and cannot make 

abode; 
Sometimes through forests, deep 
like night, we glode, 
Between the walls of mighty moun- 
tains crowned 
With Cyclopean piles, whose turrets 
proud, . ,; 

The homes of the departed, dimly 
frowned 
O'er the bright waves which girt their 
dark foundations round. 

XXXVI. 

Sometimes between the wide and 
flowering meadows 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



223 



Mile after mile we sailed, and 't was 
delight 
To see far off the sunbeams chase the 
shadows 
Over the grass: sometimes beneath 

the night 
Of wide and vaulted caves whose 
roofs were bright 
With starry gems we fled, whilst from 
their deep 
And dark - green chasms shades 
beautiful and white 
Amid sweet sounds across our path 
would sweep, 
Like swift and lovely dreams that walk 
the waves of sleep. 

XXXVII. 

And ever as we sailed our minds were 
full 
Of love and wisdom, which would 
overflow 
In converse wild and sweet and won- 
derful. 
And in quick smiles whose light 

would come and go 
Like music o'er wide waves, and in 
the flow 
Of sudden tears, and in the mute 
caress — 
For a deep shade was cleft, and we 
did know 
That virtue, though obscured on Earth, 
not less 
Survives all mortal change in lasting 
loveliness. 



XXXVIII. 

Three days and nights we sailed, as 
thought and feeling 
Number delightful hours — for 
through the sky 
j^ The sphered lamps of day and night, 
revealing 
New changes and new glories, rolled 

on high, 
Sun, moon, and moonlike lamps, 
the progeny 
Of a diviner Heaven, serene and fair: 
On the fourth day, wild as a wind- 
wrought sea 



The stream became, and fast and faster 
bare 
The spirit-winged boat, steadily speed- 
ing there. 



XXXIX. 

Steady and swift, where the waves 
rolled like mountains 
Within the vast ravine whose rifts 
did pour 
Tumultuous floods from their ten-thou- 
sand fountains. 
The thunder of whose earth-uplift- 
ing roar 
Made the air sweep in whirlvvdnds 
from the shore. 
Calm as a shade, the boat of that fair 
child 
Securely fled that rapid stress before, 
Amid the topmost spray and sunbows 
wild 
Wreathed in the silver mist : in joy and 
pride we smiled. 



XL. 

The torrent of that wide and raging 
river 
Is past, and our aerial speed sus- 
pended. 
We look behind; a golden mist did 
quiver 
Where its wild surges with the lake 

were blended: 
Our bark hung- there, as on a line 
suspended 
Between two heavens, that windless 
waveless lake 
Which four great cataracts from four 
vales, attended 
By mists, aye feed : from rocks and 
clouds they break. 
And of that azure sea a silent refuge 
make. 

XLI. 

Motionless resting on the lake awhile, 
I saw its marge of snow-bright 

mountains rear 
Their peaks aloft, I saw each radiant 

isle, 



224 



NOTE ON THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



And in the midst, afar, even like a 

sphere 
Hung in one hollow sky, did there 
appear 
The Temple of the Spirit; on the 
sound 
Which issued thence drawn nearer 
and more near, 
Like the swift moon this glorious earth 
around, 
The charmed boat approached, and 
there its haven found. 



NOTE ON THE REVOLT OF ISLAM, 
BY MRS. SHELLEY. 

Shelley possessed two remarkable 
qualities of intellect, — a brilliant imagi- 
nation, and a logical exactness of reason. 
His inclinations led him (he fancied) 
almost alike to poetry and metaphysical 
discussions. I say " he fancied," because 
I believe the former to have been para- 
mount, and that it would have gained the 
mastery even had he struggled against it. 
However, he said that he deliberated 
at one time whether he should dedicate 
himself to poetry or metaphysics; and, 
resolving on the former, he educated him- 
self for it, discarding in a great measure 
his philosophical pursuits, and engaging 
himself in the study of the poets of 
Greece, Italy, and England. To these 
may be added a constant perusal of por- 
tions of the Old Testament — the Psalms, 
the Book of Job, the Prophet Isaiah, and 
others, the sublime poetry of which filled 
him with delight. 

As a poet, his intellect and composi- 
tions were powerfully influenced by exte- 
rior circumstances, and especially by his 
place of abode. He was very fond of 
travelling, and ill-health increased this 
restlessness. The sufferings occasioned 
by a cold English winter made him pine, 
especially when our colder spring arrived, 
for a more genial climate. In 1816 he 
again visited Switzerland, and rented a 
house on the banks of the Lake of Ge- 
neva; and many a day, in cloud or sun- 
shine, was passed alone in his boat — 
sailing as the wind listed, or weltering on 



the calm waters. The majestic aspect of 
Nature ministered such thoughts as he 
afterwards enwove in verse. His lines on 
the Bridge of the Arve, and his " Hymn 
to Intellectual Beauty," were written at 
this time. Perhaps during this summer 
his genius was checked by association 
with another poet whose nature was ut- 
terly dissimilar to his own, yet who, in the 
poem he wrote at that time, gave tokens jj 
that he shared for a period the more ab- \ 
stract and etherealized inspiration of Shel- i 
ley. The saddest events awaited his | 
return to England; but such was his fear ' 
to wound the feelings of others that he 
never expressed the anguish he felt, and \ 
seldom gave vent to the indignation roused i 
by the persecutions he underwent; while 
the course of deep unexpressed passion, 
and the sense of injury, engendered the j 
desire to embody themselves in forms ' 
defecated of all the weakness and evil 
which cling to real life. 

He chose therefore for his hero a youth 
nourished in dreams of liberty, some of 
whose actions are in direct opposition to j 
the opinions of the world; but who is i 
animated throughout by an ardent love of i 
virtue, and a resolution to confer the boons | 
of political and intellectual freedom on his : 
fellow-creatures. He created for this 
youth a woman such as he delighted to 
imagine — full of enthusiasm for the same 
objects; and they both, with will unvan- 
quished, and the deepest sense of the jus- | 
tice of their cause, met adversity and 
death. There exists in this poem a memo- 
rial of a friend of his youth. The charac- 
ter of the old man who liberates Laon 
from his tower-prison, and tends on him j 
in sickness, is founded on that of Doctor 
Lind, who, when Shelley was at Eton, 
had often stood by to befriend and sup- 
port him, and whose name he never 
mentioned without love and veneration. 

During the year 181 7 we were estab- 
lished at Marlow in Buckinghamshire. 
Shelley's choice of abode was fixed chiefly 
by this town being at no great distance 
from London, and its neighborhood to the 
Thames. The poem was written in his 
boat, as it floated under the beech-groves 
of Bisham, or during wanderings in the 



NOTE ON THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



225 



neighboring country, which is distin- 
guished for pecuHar beauty. The chalk 
hills break into cliffs that overhang the 
Thames, or form valleys clothed with 
beech; the wilder portion of the country 
is rendered beautiful by exuberant vege- 
tation; and the cultivated part is pecu- 
liarly fertile. With all this wealth of 
Nature, which, either in the form of gen- 
tlemen's parks or soil dedicated to agri- 
culture, flourishes around, Marlow was 
inhabited (I hope it is altered now) by a 
very poor population. The women are 
lacemakers, and lose their health by 
sedentary labor, for which they were very 
ill paid. The Poor-laws ground to the 
dust not only the paupers, but those who 
had risen just above that state, and were 
obliged to pay poor-rates. The changes 
produced by peace following a long war, 
and a bad harvest, brought with them 
the most heart-rending evils to the poor. 
Shelley afforded what alleviation he could. 
In the winter, while bringing out his 
poem, he had a severe attack of ophthal- 
mia, caught while visiting the poor cot- 
tages. I mention these things — for this 
minute and active sympathy with his fel- 
low-creatures gives a thousand-fold inter- 
est to his speculations, and stamps with 
reality his pleadings for the human race. 
The poem, bold in its opinions and un- 
compromising in their expression, met 
with many censurers, not only among those 
who allow of no virtue but such as sup- 
ports the cause they espouse, but even 
among those whose opinions were similar 
to his own. I extract a portion of a let- 
ter written in answer to one of these 
friends. It best details the impulses of 
Shelley's mind, and his motives: it was 
written with entire unreserve; and is 
therefore a precious monument of his 
own opinion of his powers, of the purity 
of his designsj, and the ardor with which 
he clung, in adversity and through the val- 
ley of the shadow of death, to views from 
which he believed the permanent happi- 
ness of mankind must eventually spring. 

"Marlow, Dec. 11, 1817. 
" I have read and considered all that 
you say about my general powers, and 



the particular instance of the poem in 
which I have attempted to develop them. 
Nothing can be more satisfactory to me 
than the interest which your admoni- 
tions express. But I think you are mis- 
taken in some points with regard to the 
peculiar nature of my powers, whatever 
be their amount. I listened with defer- 
ence and self-suspicion to your censures 
of 'The Revolt of Islam; ' but the 
productions of mine which you commend 
hold a very low place in my own esteem; 
and this reassures me, in some degree at 
least. The poem was produced by a 
series of thoughts which filled my mind 
with unbounded and sustained enthusi- 
asm. I felt the precariousness of my 
life, and I engaged in this task, resolved 
to leave some record of myself. Much of 
what the volume contains was written with 
the same feeling — as real, though not 
so prophetic — as the communications of 
a dying man. I never presumed indeed 
to consider it anything approaching to 
faultless; but, when I consider contem- 
porary productions of the same apparent 
pretensions, I own I was filled with 
confidence. I felt that it was in many 
respects a genuine picture of my own 
mind. I felt that the sentiments were 
true, not assumed. And in this have I 
long believecLthat my power consists; in 
sympathy, and that part of the imagina- 
tion which relates to sentiment and con- 
templation. I am formed, if for any- 
thing not in common v. ith the herd of 
mankind, to apprehend minute and re- 
mote distinctions of feeling, whether 
relative to external nature or the living 
beings which surround us, and to com- 
municate the conceptions which result 
from considering either the moral or the 
material universe as a whole. Of course, 
I believe these faculties, which perhaps 
comprehend all that is sublime in man, to 
exist very imperfectly in my own mind. 
But, when you advert to my Chancery- 
paper, a cold, forced, unimpassioned, in- 
significant piece of cramped and cautious 
argument, and to the little scrap about 
' Mandeville,' which expressed my feel- 
ings indeed, but cost scarcely two min- 
utes' thought to express, as specimens of 



226 



PRINCE ATHANASE. 



my powers more favorable than that 
which grew as it were from ' the agony 
and bloody sweat ' of intellectual trav- 
ail; surely I must feel that, in some 
manner, either I am mistaken in believ- 
ing that I have any talent at all, or you 
in the selection of the specimens of it. 
Yet, after all, I cannot but be conscious, 
in much of what I write, of an absence 
of that tranquillity which is the attribute 
and accompaniment of power. This 
feeling alone would make your most kind 
and wise admonitions, on the subject of 
the economy of intellectual force, valu- 
able to me. And, if I live, or if I see 
any trust in coming years, doubt not but 
that I shall do something, whatever it 
may be, which a serious and earnest esti- 
mate of my powers will suggest to me, 
and which will be in every respect ac- 
commodated to their utmost limits." 



PRINCE ATHANASE.i 
A FRAGMENT. 

Part I. 

There was a youth, who, as with toil 

and travel. 
Had grown quite weak and gray before 

his time; 
Nor any could the restless griefs unravel 

Which burned within him, withering up 
his prime 

^ The idea Shelley had formed of Prince 
Athanase was a good deal modelled on A lastor. 
In the first sketch of the poem, he named it Pati- 
demos and Uraitia. Athanase seeks through 
the world the One whom he may love. He 
meets, in the ship in which he is embarked, a 
lady who appears to him to embody his ideal of 
love and beauty. But she proves to be Pan- 
demos, or the earthly and unworthy Venus ; 
who, after disappointing his cherislied dreams 
and hopes, deserts him. Athanase, crushed by 
sorrow, pines and dies. " On his deatlibed, the 
lady who can really reply to his soul comes and 
kisses his lips." {The Deathbed of Athaiiase.) 
The poet describes her [in the words of the final 
fragment, p. 231]. This slender note is all we 
have to aid our imagination in shaping out the 
form of the poem, such as its author imagined. 
[Mrs. Shelley's Note.] 



And goading him, like fiends, from land 

to land. 
Not his the load of any secret crime, 

For naught of ill his heart could under- 
stand. 
But pity and wild sorrow for the same; — 
Not his the thirst for glory or command 

Baffled with blast of hope-consuming 

shame; 
Nor evil joys which fire the vulgar breast 
And quench in speedy smoke its feeble 

flame, 

Had left within his soul their dark un- 
rest : 
Nor what religion fables of the grave 
Feared he, — Philosophy's accepted guest. 

For none than he a purer heart could 

have. 
Or that loved good more for itself alone; 
Of naught in heaven or earth was he the 

slave. 

What sorrow strange, and shadowy, and 

unknown, 
Sent him, a hopeless wanderer, through 

mankind? — 
If with a human sadness he did groan, 

He had a gentle yet aspiring mind; 
Just, innocent, with varied learning fed, 
And such a glorious consolation find 

In others' joy, when all their own is 

dead: 
He loved, and labored for his kind in 

grief. 
And yet, unlike all others, it is said, 

That from such toil he never found relief. 
Although a child of fortune*and of power. 
Of an ancestral name the orphan chief, 

His soul had wedded Wisdom, and hei 

dower 
Is love and justice, clothed in which he 

sate 
Apart from men, as in a lonely tower. 



PRINCE A THANASE. 



22} 



Pitying the tumult of their dark estate — 
Yet even in youth did he not e'er abuse 
The strength of weaUh or thought, to 
consecrate 

Those false opinions which the harsh 

rich use 
To blind the world they famish for their 

pride; 
Nor did he hold from any man his dues, 

But like a steward in honest dealings tried 
With those who toiled and wept, the 

poor and wise, 
His riches and his cares he did divide. 

Fearless he was, and scorning all dis- 
guise, 

What he dared do or think, though men 
might start, 

He spoke with mild yet unaverted eyes; 

Liberal he was of soul, and frank of 
heart. 

And to his many friends — all loved him 
well — 

Whate'er he knew or felt he would im- 
part, 

If words he found those inmost thoughts 

to tell; 
If not, he smiled or wept; and his weak 

foes 
He neither spurned nor hated, though 

with fell 

And mortal hate their thousand voices 

rose. 
They past like aimless arrows from his 

ear — 
Nor did his heart or mind its portal close 

To those, or them, or any whom life's 

sphere 
May comprehend within its wide array. 
What sadness made that vernal spirit 

sere? 

He knew not. Though his life, day 

after day. 
Was failing lik^ an unreplenisht stream, 
rhoup^^ ' xiis eyes a cloud and burden 

lay, 



Through which his soul, like Vesper's 

serene beam 
Piercing the chasms of ever rising clouds, 
Siione, softly burning; though his lips 

did seem 

Like reeds which quiver in impetuous 
floods; 

And through his sleep, and o'er each 
waking hour, 

Thoughts after thoughts, unresting mul- 
titudes. 

Were driven within him, by some secret 

power. 
Which bade them blaze, and live, and 

roll afar. 
Like lights and sounds, from haunted 

tower to tower 

O'er castled mountains borne, when 

tempest's war 
Is levied by the night-contending winds 
And the pale dalesmen watch with eager 

ear; — 

Though such were in his spirit, as the 

fiends 
Which wake and feed on everliving woe,— 
What was this grief, which ne'er in other 

minds 

A mirror found, — he knew not — none 

could know; 
But on whoe'er might question him he 

turned 
The light of his frank eyes, as if to show, 

He knew not of the grief within that 

burned, 
But asked forbearance with a mournful 

look; 
Or spoke in words from which none ever 

learned 

The cause of his disquietude; or shook 
With spasms of silent passion; or turned 

pale: 
So that his friends soon rarely undertook 

To stir his secret pain without avail; — 
For all who knew and loved him then 
perceived 



228 



PRINCE ATHANASE. 



That there was drawn an adamantine 
veil 

Between his heart and mind, — both un- 
relieved 

Wrought in his brain and bosom separate 
strife. 

Some said that he was mad, others 
believed 

That memories of an antenatal life 
Made this, where now he dwelt, a penal 

hell; 
And others said that such mysterious grief 

From God's displeasure, like a darkness, 
fell 

On souls like his which owned no higher 
law 

Than love ; love calm, steadfast, invin- 
cible 

By mortal fear or supernatural awe; 
And others, — "'Tis the shadow of a 

dream 
Which the veiled eye of memory never 

saw 

"But through the soul's abyss, like 

some dark stream 
Through shattered mines and caverns 

underground 
Rolls, shaking its foundations; and no 

beam 

"Of joy may rise, but it is quencht 

and drowned 
In the dim whirlpools of this dream 

obscure. 
Soon its exhausted waters will have found 

"A lair of rest beneath thy spirit pure, 
O Athanase ! — in one so good and great, 
Evil or tumult cannot long endure." 

So spake they: idly of another's state 
Babbling vain words and fond philos- 
ophy; 
This was their consolation; such debate 

Men held with one another; nor did he 
Like one who labors with a human woe 
Decline this talk : as if its theme might be 



Another, not himself, he to and fro 
Questioned and canvast it with subtlest 

wit, 
And none but those who loved him best 

could know 

That which he knew not, how it galled 

and bit 
His weary mind, this converse vain and 

cold; 
For like an eyeless nightmare grief did sit 

Upon his being; a snake which fold by 

fold 
Brest out the life of life, a clinging 

fiend 
Which clencht him if he stirred with 

deadlier hold; — 
And so his grief remained — let it remain 

— untold. 1 



Part II. 

FRAGMENT I. 

Prince Athanase had one beloved 

friend. 
An old, old man, with hair of silver 

white. 
And lips where heavenly smiles would 

hang and blend 

With his wise words; and eyes whose 

arrowy light 
Shone Hke the reflex of a thousand 

minds. 
He was the last whom superstition's 

blight 

Had spared in Greece — the blight that 

cramps and blinds, — 
And in his olive bower at QLnoe 
Had sate from earliest youth. Like one 

who finds 



^ The Author was pursuing a fuller develop- 
ment of the ideal character of Athanase, when it 
struck him that in an attempt at extreme refine- 
ment and analysis, his conceptions might be 
betrayed into the assuming a morbid character. 
The reader will iudge whether he is a loser or 
gainer by the difference. [Shelley's Note.] 



PRINCE ATHANASE. 



229 



A fertile island in a barren sea, 
One mariner who has survived his mates 
Many a drear month in a great ship — 
so he 

With soul-sustaining songs, and sv^^eet 
debates 

Of ancient lore, there fed his lonely 
being : — 

" The mind becomes that which it con- 
templates," — 

And thus Zonoras, by forever seeing 
Their bright creations, grew like wisest 

men; 
And when he heard the crash of nations 

fleeing 

A bloodier power than ruled thy ruins 

then, 
O sacred Hellas ! many weary years 
He wandered, till the path of Laian's glen 

Was grass-grown — and the unremem- 

bered tears 
Were dry in Laian for their honored 

chief. 
Who fell in Byzant, pierced by Moslem 

spears: — 

And as the lady lookt with faithful 

grief 
From her high lattice o'er the rugged 

path, 
Where she once saw that horseman toil, 

with brief 

And blighting hope, who with the news 
of- death 

Struck body and soul as with a mortal 
blight, 

She saw beneath the chestnuts, far be- 
neath, 

An old man toiling up, a weary wight; 
And soon within her hospitable hall 
She saw his white hairs glittering in the 
light 

Of the wood fire, and round his shoul- 
ders fall; 
And his wan visage and his withered mien 
Yet calm and gentle and majestical. 



And Athanase, her child, who must have 

been 
Then three years old, sate opposite and 

gazed 
In patient silence. 



FRAGMENT II. 

Such was Zonoras; and as daylight finds 
One amaranth glittering on the path of 

frost, 
When autumn nights have nipt all 

w^eaker kinds, 

Thus through his age, dark, cold, and 

tempest-tost, 
Shone truth upon Zonoras; and he filled 
From fountains pure, nigh overgrown 

and lost, 

The spirit of Prince Athanase, a child. 
With soul-sustaining songs of ancient lore 
And philosophic wisdom, clear and mild. 

And sweet and subtle talk they evermore, 
The pupil and the master, shared; until, 
Sharing that undiminishable store. 

The youth, as shadows on a grassy hill 
Outrun the winds that chase them, soon 

outran 
His teacher, and did teach with native 

skill 

Strange truths and new to that experi- 
enced man; 

Still they were friends, as few have ever 
been 

Who mark the extremes of life's dis- 
cordant span. 

So in the caverns of the forest green. 
Or by the rocks of echoing ocean hoar, 
Zonoras and Prince Athanase were seen 

By summer woodmen; and when win- 
ter's roar 

Sounded o'er earth and sea its blast of 
war, 

The Balearic fisher, driven from shore, 



230 



PRINCE ATHANASE. 



Hanging upon the peaked wave afar, 
Then saw their lamp from Laian's turret 

gleam, 
Piercing the stormy darkness like a star. 

Which pours beyond the sea one stead- 
fast beam, 
Whilst all the constellations of the sky 
Seemed reeling through the storm. They 
did but seem — 

For, lo ! the wintry clouds are all gone by, 
And bright Arcturus through yon pines 

is glowing, 
And far o'er southern waves, immovably 

Belted Orion hangs — warm light is 

flowing 
From the young moon into the sunset's 

chasm. — 
*' O, summer eve ! with power divine, 

bestowing 

*' On thine own bird the sweet enthu- 
siasm 

Which overflows in notes of liquid glad- 
ness, 

Filling the sky like light ! How many 
a spasm 

" Of fevered brains, opprest with grief 
and madness. 

Were lulled by thee, delightful nightin- 
gale ! 

And these soft waves, murmuring a gen- 
tle sadness, 

**And the far sighings of yon piny dale 
Made vocal by some wind, we feel not 

here, — 
I bear alone what nothing may avail 

** To lighten — a strange load!" — No 

human ear 
Heard this lament; but o'er the visage 

wan 
Of Athanase, a ruffling atmosphere 

Of dark emotion, a swift shadow ran. 
Like wind upon some forest-bosomed 

lake, 
Glassy and dark. — And that divine old 

man 



Beheld his mystic friend's whole being 

shake. 
Even where its inmost depths were 

gloomiest — 
And with a calm and measured voice he 

spake. 

And with a soft and equal pressure, 
prest 

That cold lean hand : — " Dost thou re- 
member yet 

When the curved moon then lingering in 
the west 

" Paused in yon waves her mighty horns 

to wet, 
How in those beams we walkt, half 

resting on the sea? 
'Tis just one year — sure thou dost not 

forget — 

"Then Plato's words of light in thee 

and me 
Lingered like moonlight in the moonless 

east. 
For we had just then read — thy memory 

" Is faithful now — the story of the feast; 
And Agathon and Diotima seemed 
From death and dark forgetfulness re- 
least. 



FRAGMENT III. 

'T WAS at the season when the Earth up- 

springs 
From slumber, as a sphered angel's child, 
Shadowing its eyes with green and gold- 
en wings. 

Stands up before its mother bright and 

mild, 
Of whose soft voice the air expectant 

seems — 
So stood before the sun, which shone 

and smiled 

To see it rise thus joyous from its dreams, 
The fresh and radiant Earth. The hoary 

grove 
Waxt green — and flowers burst forth 

like starry beams ; — 



PRINCE ATHANASE, 



231 



The grass in the warm sun did start and 

move, 
And sea-buds burst beneath the waves 

serene : — 
How many a one, though none be near 

to love, 

Loves then the shade of his own soul, 

half seen 
In any mirror — or the spring's young 

minions, 
The winged leaves amid the copses 

green;— 

How many a spirit then puts on the 

pinions 
Of fancy, and outstrips the lagging blast. 
And his own steps — and over wide 

dominions 

Sweeps in his dream-drawn chariot, far 

and fast. 
More fleet than storms — the wide world 

shrinks below. 
When winter and despondency are 

past. 

'T was at this season that Prince Athanase 
Past the white Alps — those eagle-baf- 
fling mountains 
Slept in their shrouds of snow; — beside 
the ways 

The waterfalls were voiceless — for their 

fountains 
Were changed to mines of sunless crystal 

now, 
Or by the curdling winds — like brazen 

wings 

Which clanged along the mountain's 

marble brow — 
Warpt into adamantine fretwork, hung 
And filled with frozen light the chasm 

below. 



FRAGMENT IV. 

Thou art the wine whose drunkenness 

is all 
We can desire, O Love ! and happy souls, 



Ere from thy vine the leaves of autumn 
fall. 

Catch thee, and feed from their o'er- 

flowing bowls 
Thousands who thirst for thy ambrosial 

dew; — 
Thou art the radiance which where 

ocean rolls 

Investest it; and when the heavens are 

blue 
Thou fillest them; and when the earth 

is fair 
The shadow of thy moving wings imbue 

Its deserts and its mountains, till they 

wear 
Beauty like some bright robe; — thou 

ever soarest 
Among the towers of men, and as soft air 

In spring, which moves the unawakened 

forest, 
Clothing with leaves its branches bare 

and bleak, 
Thou floatest among men; and aye im- 

plorest 

That which from thee they should im- 
plore : — the weak 

Alone kneel to thee, offering up the 
hearts 

The strong have broken — yet where 
shall any seek 

A garment whom thou clothest not? 

ANOTHER FRAGMENT. 

Her hair was brown, her sphered eyes 

were brown, 
And in their dark and liquid moisture 

swam. 
Like the dim orb of the eclipsed moon; 

Yet when the spirit flasht beneath, 

there came 
The light from them, as when tears oi 

delight 
Double the western planet's serene flame 



232 



ROSALIND AND HELEN 



ROSALIND AND HELEN. 

A MODERN ECLOGUE. 

ADVERTISEMENT. 

The story of " Rosalind and Helen " 
is, undoubtedly, not an attempt in the 
highest style of poetry. It is in no de- 
gree calculated to excite profound medi- 
tation; and if, by interesting the affections 
and amusing the imagination, it awaken a 
certain ideal melancholy favorable to the 
reception of more important impressions, 
it will produce in the reader all that the 
writer experienced in the composition. I 
resigned myself, as I wrote, to the im- 
pulse of the feelings which moulded the 
conception of the story; and this im- 
pulse determined the pauses of a meas- 
ure, which only pretends to be regular 
inasmuch as it corresponds with, and 
expresses, the irregularity of the imagina- 
tions which inspired it. 

I do not know which of the few scattered 
poems I left in England will be selected 
by my bookseller to add to this collection. 
One,i which I sent from Italy, was written 
after a day's excursion among those lovely 
mountains which surround what was once 
the retreat, and where is now the sepul- 
chre, of Petrarch. If any one is inclined 
to condemn the insertion of the intro- 
ductory lines, which image forth the sud- 
den relief of a state of deep despondency 
by the radiant visions disclosed by the 
sudden burst of an Italian sunrise in 
autumn on the highest peak of those 
delightful mountains, I can only offer as 
my excuse, that they were not erased at 
the request of a dear friend, with whom 
added years of intercourse only add to 
my apprehension of its value, and who 
would have had more right than any one 
to complain that she has not been able 
to extinguish in me the very power of 
delineating sadness. 

Naples, Dec. 20, 1818. 



1 " Lines written among the Euganean Hills." 
— Ed. 



Rosalind, Helen and her Child. 
Scene. The Shore of the Lake of Como. 

HELEN. 

Come hither, my sweet Rosalind. 

'T is long since thou and I have met; 

And yet methinks it were unkind 

Those moments to forget. 

Come sit by me. I see thee stand 

By this lone lake, in this far land, 

Thy loose hair in the light wind flying, 

Thy sweet voice to each tone of even 

United, and thine eyes replying 

To the hues of yon fair heaven. 

Come, gentle friend: wilt sit by me? 

And be as thou wert wont to be 

Ere we were disunited? 

None doth behold us now : the power 

That led us forth at this lone hour 

Will be but ill requited 

If thou depart in scorn : oh ! come, 

And talk of our abandoned home. 

Remember, this is Italy, 

And we are exiles. Talk with me 

Of that our land, whose wilds and floods, 

Barren and dark although they be, 

Were dearer than these chestnut woods: 

Those heathy paths, that inland stream, 

And the blue mountains, shapes which 

seem 
Like wrecks of childhood's sunny dream: 
Which that we have abandoned now. 
Weighs on the heart like that remorse 
Which altered friendship leaves. I seek 
No more our youthful intercourse. 
That cannot be ! Rosalind, speak, 
Speak to me. Leave me not. — When 

morn did come, 
When evening fell upon our common 

home. 
When for dne hour we parted, — do not 

frown : 
I would not chide thee, though thy 

faith is broken: 
But turn to me. Oh ! by this cherished 

token, 
Of woven hair, which thou wilt not 

disown, 
Turn, as 'twere but the memory of me. 
And not my scorned self who prayed to 

thee. 



ROSALIND AND HELEN. 



^Z7> 



ROSALIND. 

Is it a dream, or do 1 see 
And hear frail Helen? I would flee 
Thy tainting touch; but former years 
Arise, and bring forbidden tears; 
And my o'erburdened memory 
Seeks yet its lost repose in thee. 
I share thy crime. I cannot choose 
But weep for thee : mine own strange 

grief 
But seldom stoops to such relief : 
Nor ever did I love thee less, 
Though mourning o'er thy wickedness 
Even with a sister's woe. I knew 
What to the evil world is due, 
And therefore sternly did refuse 
To link me with the infamy 
Of one so lost as Helen. Now 
Bewildered by my dire despair. 
Wondering I blush, and weep that thou 
Shoulds't love me still, — thou only! — 

There, 
Let us sit on that gray stone, 
Till our mournful talk be done. 

HELEN. 

Alas! not there; I cannot bear 

The murmur of this lake to hear. 

A sound from there, Rosalind dear. 

Which never yet I heard elsewhere 

But in our native land, recurs, 

Even here where now we meet. It stirs 

Too much of suffocating sorrow ! 

In the dell of yon dark chestnut wood 

Is a stone seat, a solitude 

Less like our own. The ghost of peace 

Will not desert this spot. To-morrow, 

If thy kind feelings should not cease, 

We may sit here. 

ROSALIND. 

Thou lead, my sweet, 
And I will follow. 

HENRY. 

'Tis Fenici's seat 
Where you are going? This is not the 

way. 
Mamma; it leads behind those trees 

that grow 
Close to the little river. 



HELEN. 

Yes : I know : 
I was bewildered. Kiss me, and be gay, 
Dear boy: why do you sob? 

HENRY. 

I do not know : 
But it might break any one's heart to 

see 
You and the lady cry so bitterly. 



HELEN. 



Go 



It is a gentle child, my friend 

home, 

Henry, and play with Lilla till I come. 
We only cried with joy to see each other; 
We are quite merry now: Good-night. 

The boy 
Lifted a sudden look upon his mother. 
And in the gleam of forced and hollow 

joy 
Which lightened o'er her face, laught 

with the glee 
Of light and unsuspecting infancy, 
And whispered in her ear, "Bring home 

with you 
That sweet strange lady friend." Then 

off he flew. 
But stopt, and beckoned with a mean- 
ing smile. 
Where the road turned. Pale Rosalind 

the while, 
Hiding her face, stood weeping silently. 

In silence then they took the way 

Beneath the forest's solitude. 

It was a vast and antique wood. 

Thro' which they took their way; 

And the gray shades of evening 

O'er that green wilderness did fling 

Still deeper solitude. 

Pursuing still the path that wound 

The vast and knotted trees around 

Thro' which slow shades were wandering, 

To a deep lawny dell they came, 

To a stone seat beside a spring, 

O'er which the columned wood did frame 

A roofless temple, like the fane 

Where, ere new creeds could faith obtain, 

Man's early race once knelt beneath 



234 



ROSALIND AND HELEN. 



The overhanging deity. 

O'er this fair fountain hung the sky, 

Now spangled with rare stars. The 

snake, 
The pale snake, that with eager breath 
Creeps here his noontide thirst to slake, 
Is beaming with many a mingled hue, 
Shed from yon dome's eternal blue. 
When he floats on that dark and lucid 

flood 
In the light of his own loveliness; 
And the birds that in the fountain dip 
Their plumes, with fearless fellowship 
Above and round him wheel and hover. 
The fitful wind is heard to stir 
One solitary leaf on high; 
The chirping of the grasshopper 
Fills every pause. There is emotion 
In all that dwells at noontide here: 
Then, thro' the intricate wild wood, 
A maze of life and light and motion 
Is woven. But there is stillness now: 
Gloom, and the trance of Nature now : 
The snake is in his cave asleep; 
The birds are on the branches dreaming : 
Only the shadows creep : 
Only the glow-worm is gleaming: 
Only the owls and the nightingales 
Wake in this dell when daylight fails, 
And gray shades gather in the woods: 
And the owls have all fled far away 
In a merrier glen to hoot and play, 
For the moon is veiled and sleeping now. 
The accustomed nightingale still broods 
On her accustomed bough, 
But she is mute; for her false mate 
Has fled and left her desolate. 

This silent spot tradition old 

Had peopled with the spectral dead. 

For the roots of the speaker's hair felt 

cold 
And stiff, as with tremulous lips he told 
That a hellish shape at midnight led 
The ghost of a youth with hoary hair. 
And sate on the seat beside him there. 
Till a naked child came wandering by. 
When the fiend would change to a lady 

fair ! 
A fearful tale ! The truth was worse: 
For here a sister and a brother 
Had solemnized a monstrous curse, 
Meeting in this fair solitude: 



For beneath yon very sky. 
Had they resigned to one another 
Body and soul. The multitude, 
Tracking them to the secret wood, 
Tore limb from limb their innocent child, 
And stabbed and trampled on its mother; 
But the youth, for God's most holy grace, 
A priest saved to burn in the market- 
place. 

Duly at evening Helen came 

To this lone silent spot, 

From the wrecks of a tale of wilder 

sorrow 
So much of sympathy to borrow 
As soothed her own dark lot. 
Duly each evening from her home, 
With her fair child would Helen come 
To sit upon that antique seat. 
While the hues of day were pale; 
And the bright boy beside her feet 
Now lay, lifting at intervals 
His broad blue eyes on her; 
Now, where some sudden impulse calls 
Following. He was a gentle boy 
And in all gentle sports took joy; 
Oft in a dry leaf for a boat, 
With a small feather for a sail, 
His fancy on that spring would float, 
If some invisible breeze might stir 
Its marble calm : and Helen smiled 
Thro' tears of awe on the gay child. 
To think that a boy as fair as he. 
In years which never more may be, 
By that same fount, in that same wood, 
The like sweet fancies had pursued; 
And that a mother, lost like her. 
Had mournfully sate watching him. 
Then all the scene was wont to swim 
Through the mist of a burning tear. 

For many months had Helen known i 
This scene; and now she thither turned j 
Her footsteps, not alone. 
The friend whose falsehood she had 

mourned. 
Sate with her on that seat of stone. 
Silent they sate; for evening, 
And the power its glimpses bring 
Had, with one awful shadow, quelled 
The passion of their grief. They sate 
With linked hands, for unrepelled 
Had Helen taken Rosalind's. 



ROSALIND AND HELEN 



235 



Like the autumn wind, when it unbinds 
The tangled locks of the nightshade's 

hair, 
Which is twined in the sultry summer 

air 
Round the walls of an outworn sepulchre. 
Did the voice of Helen, sad and sweet. 
And the sound of her heart that ever 

beat, 
As with sighs and words she breathed 

on her. 
Unbind the knots of her friend's despair. 
Till her thoughts were free to float and 

flow; 
And from her laboring bosom now, 
Like the bursting of a prisoned flame. 
The voice of a long-pent sorrow came. 

ROSALIND. 

I saw the dark earth fall upon 
The cofifin; and I saw the stone 
Laid over him whom this cold breast 
Had pillowed to his nightly rest ! 
Thou knowest not, thou canst not know 
My agony. Oh ! I could not weep : 
The sources whence such blessings flow 
Were not to be approacht by me ! 
But I could smile, and I could sleep, 
Though with a self-accusing heart. 
In morning's light, in evening's gloom, 
I watcht, — and would not thence de- 
part — 
My husband's unlamented tomb. 
My children knew their sire was gone, 
But when I told them, — "he is dead," — 
They laught aloud in frantic glee, 
They clapt their hands and leapt 

about. 
Answering each other's ecstasy 
With many a prank and merry shout. 
But I sat silent and alone, 
Wrapt in the mock of mourning weed. 

They laught, for he was dead: but I 
Sate with a hard and tearless eye. 
And with a heart which would deny 
The secret joy it could not quell, 
Low muttering o'er his loathed name; 
Till from that self-contention came 
Remorse where sin was none; a hell 
Which in pure spirits should not dwell. 



I'll tell thee truth. He was a man 
Hard, selfish, loving only gold, 
Yet full of guile : his pale eyes ran 
With tears, which each some falsehood 

told. 
And oft his smooth and bridled tongue 
Would give the lie to his flushing cheek : 
He was a coward to the strong: 
He was a tyrant to the weak. 
On whom his vengeance he would wreak : 
For scorn, whose arrows search the heart. 
From many a stranger's eye would dart, 
And on his memory cling, and follow 
His soul to its home so cold and hollow. 
He was a tyrant to the weak. 
And we were such, alas the day ! 
Oft, when my little ones at play, 
Were in youth's natural lightness gay, 
Or if they listened to some tale 
Of travellers, or of fairy land, — 
When the light from the wood-fire's 

dying brand 
Flasht on their faces, — if they heard 
Or thought they heard upon the stair 
His footstep, the suspended word 
Died on my lips: we all grew pale: 
The babe at my bosom was husht with 

fear 
If it thought it heard its father near; 
And my two wild boys would near my 

knee 
Cling, cowed and cowering fearfully. 

I'll tell thee truth: I loved another. 
His name in my ear was ever ringing. 
His form to my brain was ever clinging: 
Yet if some stranger breathed that name, 
My lips turned white, and my heart beat 

fast: 
My nights were once haunted by dreams 

of flame, 
My days were dim in the shadow cast 
By the memory of the same ! 
Day and night, day and night. 
He was my breath and life and light, 
For three short years, which soon were 

past. 
On the fourth, my gentle mother 
Led me to the shrine, to be 
His sworn bride eternally. 
And now we stood on the altar stair. 
When my father came from a distant 

land. 



236 



ROSALIND AND HELEN, 



And with a loud and fearful cry 

Rusht between us suddenly. 

I saw the stream of his thin gray hair, 

I saw his lean and lifted hand, 

And heard his words, — and live ! Oh 

God! 
Wherefore do I live? — "Hold, hold!" 
He cried, — "I tell thee 't is her brother ! 
Thy mother, boy, beneath the sod 
Of yon churchyard rests in her shroud 

so cold : 
I am now weak, and pale, and old: 
We were once dear to one another, 
I and that corpse ! Thou art our child ! " 
Then with a laugh both long and wild 
The youth upon the pavement fell : 
They found him dead ! All looked on 

me, 
The spasms of my despair to see : 
But I was calm. I went away : 
I was clammy-cold like clay ! 
I did not weep: I did not speak: 
But day by day. Week after week, 
I walkt about like a corpse alive ! 
Alas ! sweet friend, you must believe 
This heart is stone : it did not break. 

My father lived a little while. 
But all might see that he was dying. 
He smiled with such a woeful smile ! 
When he was in the churchyard lying 
Among the worms, we grew quite poor, 
So that no one would give us bread: 
My mother lookt at me, and said 
Faint words of cheer, which only meant 
That she could die and be content; 
So I went forth from the same church 

door 
To another husband's bed. 
And this was he who died at last, 
When weeks and months and years had 

past. 
Through which I firmly did fulfil 
My duties, a devoted wife, 
With the stern step of vanquisht will. 
Walking beneath the night of life. 
Whose hours extinguisht, like slow 

rain 
Falling for ever, pain by pain. 
The very hope of death's dear rest; 
Which, since the heart within my breast 
Of natural life was dispossest, 
Its strange sustainer there had been. 



When flowers were dead, and grass was 

green 
Upon my mother's grave, — that mother 
Whom to outlive, and cheer, and make 
My wan eyes glitter for her sake. 
Was my vowed task, the single care 
Which once gave life to my despair, — 
When she was a thing that did not stir 
And the crawling worms were cradling 

her 
To a sleep more deep and so more sweet 
Than a baby's rockt on its nurse's knee, 
I lived : a living pulse then beat 
Beneath my heart that awakened me. 
What was this pulse so warm and free? 
Alas ! I knew it could not be 
My own dull blood : 't was like a thought 
Of liquid love, that spread and wrought 
Under my bosom and in my brain, 
And crept with the blood through every 

vein; 
And hour by hour, day after day. 
The wonder could not charm away, 
But laid in sleep, my wakeful pain. 
Until I knew it was a child. 
And then I wept. For long, long years 
These frozen eyes had shed no tears : 
But now — 't was the season fair and mild 
When April has wept itself to May: 
I sate through the sweet sunny day 
By my window bowered round with 

leaves. 
And down my cheeks the quick tears ran 
Like twinkling rain-drops from the eaves, 
When warm spring showers are passing 

o'er: 
O Helen, none can ever tell 
The joy it was to weep once more ! 

\ wept to think how hard it were 
To kill my babe, and take from it 
The sense of light, and the warm air, 
And my own fond and tender care. 
And love and smiles; ere I knew yet 
That these for it might, as for me. 
Be the masks of a grinning mockery. 
And haply, I would dream, 't were sweet 
To feed it from my faded breast, 
Or mark my own heart's restless beat 
Rock it to its untroubled rest, 
And watch the growing soul beneath 
Dawn in faint smiles; and h^ar its 
breath, 



ROSALIND AND HELEN. 



237 



Half interrupted by calm sighs, 
And search the depth of its fair eyes 
For long departed memories ! 
And so I lived till that sweet load 
Was lightened. Darkly forward flowed 
The stream of years, and on it bore 
Two shapes of gladness to my sight; 
Two other babes, delightful more 
In my lost soul's abandoned night. 
Than their own country ships may be 
Sailing towards wrecked mariners. 
Who cling to the rock of a wintry sea. 
For each, as it came, brought soothing 

tears, 
And a loosening warmth, as each one 

lay 
Sucking the sullen milk away. 
About my frozen heart, did play, 
And weaned it, oh how painfully! — 
As they themselves were weaned each 

one 
From that sweet food, — even from the 

thirst 
Of death, and nothingness, and rest, 
Strange inmate of a living breast ! 
Which all that I had undergone 
Of grief and shame, since she, who first 
The gates of that dark refuge closed, 
Came to my sight, and almost burst 
The seal of that Lethean spring; 
But these fair shadows interposed: 
For all delights are shadows now ! 
And from my brain to my dull brow 
The heavy tears gather and flow : 
I cannot speak : Oh let me weep ! 

The tears which fell from her wan eyes 
Glimmered among the moonlight dew: 
Her deep hard sobs and heavy sighs 
Their echoes in the darkness threw. 
When she grew calm, she thus did keep 
The tenor of her tale: 

He died: 
I know not how : he was not old, 
If age be numbered by its years : 
But he was bowed and bent with fears, 
Pale with a quenchless thirst of gold. 
Which, like fierce fever left him weak; 
And his strait lip and bloated cheek 
Were warpt in spasms by hollow 

sneers; 
And selfish cares with barren plough, 
Not age, had lined his narrow brow. 



And foul and cruel thoughts, which 

feed 
Upon the withering life withinj 
Like vipers on some poisonous weed. 
Whether his ill were death or sin 
None knew, until he died indeed, 
And then men owned they were the 

same. 
Seven days within my chamber lay 
That corse, and my babes made holiday: 
At last, I told them what is death : 
The eldest, with a kind of shame, 
Came to my knees with silent breath, 
And sate awe-stricken at my feet; 
And soon the others left their play, 
And sate there loo. It is unmeet 
To shed on the brief flower of youth 
The withering knowledge of the grave; 
From me remorse then wrung that truth, 
I could not bear the joy which gave 
Too just a response to mine own. 
In vain. I dared not feign a groan; 
And in their artless looks I saw. 
Between the mists of fear and awe. 
That my own thought was theirs; and 

they 
Expresst it not in words, but said, 
Each in its heart, how every day 
Will pass in happy work and play. 
Now he is dead and gone away. 

After the funeral all our kin 
Assembled, and the will was read. 
My friend, I tell thee, even the dead 
Have strength, their putrid shrouds 

within. 
To blast and torture. Those who live 
Still fear the living, but a corse 
Is merciless, and Power doth give 
To such pale tyrants half the spoil 
He rends from those who groan and toil, 
Because they blush not with remorse 
Among their crawling worms. Behold, 
I have no child ! my tale grows old 
With grief, and staggers : let it reach 
The lim.its of my feeble speech. 
And languidly at length recline 
On the brink of its own grave and mine 

Thou knowest what a thing is Poverty 
Among the fallen on evil days: 
'Tis Crime, and Fear, and Infamy, 
And houseless Want in frozen ways 



238 



ROSALIND AND HELEN. 



Wandering ungarmented, and Pain, 
And, worse than all, that inward stain, 
Foul Self-contempt, which drowns in 

sneers 
Youth's starlight smile, and makes its 

tears 
First like hot gall, then dry forever ! 
And well thou knowest a mother never 
Could doom her children to this ill, 
And well he knew the same. The will 
Imported, that if e'er again 
I sought my children to behold. 
Or in my birthplace did remahi 
Beyond three days, whose hours were told. 
They should inherit naught : and he, 
To whom next came their patrimony, 
A sallow lawyer, cruel and cold, 
Aye watched me, as the will was read, 
With eyes askance, which sought to see 
The secrets of my agony; 
And with close lips and anxious brow 
Stood canvassing still to and fro 
The chance of my resolve, and all 
The dead man's caution just did call; 
For in that killing lie 'twas said — 
"She is adulterous, and doth hold 
In secret that the Christian creed 
Is false, and therefore is much need 
That I should have a care to save 
My children from eternal fire." 
Friend, he was sheltered by the grave. 
And therefore dared to be a liar ! 
In truth, the Indian on the pyre 
Of her dead husband, half consumed, 
As well might there be false, as I 
To those abhorred embraces doomed. 
Far worse than fire's brief agony. 
As to the Christian creed, if true 
Or false, I never questioned it: 
I took it as the vulgar do : 
Nor my vext soul had leisure yet 
To doubt the things men say, or deem 
That they are other than they seem. 

All present who those crimes did hear. 
In feigned or actual scorn and fear. 
Men, women, children, slunk away, 
Whispering with self-contented pride. 
Which half suspects its own base lie. 
I spoke to none, nor did abide, 
But silently I went my way. 
Nor noticed I where joyously 
Sate my two younger babes at play. 



In the court-yard through which I past; 
But went with footsteps firm and fast 
Till I came to the brink of the ocean 

green. 
And there, a woman with gray hairs, 
Who had my mother's servant been. 
Kneeling, with many tears and prayers, 
Made me accept a purse of gold. 
Half of the earnings she had kept 
To refuge her when weak and old. 
With woe, which never sleeps or slept, 
I wander now. 'Tis a vain thought — 
But on yon alp, whose snowy head 
Mid the azure air is islanded, 
(We see it o'er the flood of cloud, 
Which sunrise from its eastern caves 
Drives, wrinkling into golden waves, 
Hung with its precipices proud. 
From that gray stone where first we met) 
There — now who knows the dead feel 

naught ? — 
Should be my grave; for he who yet 
Is my soul's soul, once said: "'Twere 

sweet 
Mid stars and lightnings to abide, 
And winds and lulling snows, that beat 
With their soft flakes the mountain wide, 
When weary meteor lamps repose. 
And languid storms their pinions close: 
And all things strong and bright and 

pure, 
And ever during, aye endure : 
Who knows, if one were buried there, 
But these things might our spirits make, 
Amid the all-surrounding air, 
Their own eternity partake? " 
Then 't was a wild and playful saying 
At which I laught, or seemed to laugh: 
They were his words : now heed my 

praying. 
And let them be my epitaph. 
Thy memory for a term may be 
My monument. Wilt remember me? 
I know thou wilt, and canst forgive 
Whilst in this erring world to live 
My soul disdained not, that I thought 
Its lying forms were worthy aught 
And much less thee. 

HELEN. 

O speak not so, 
But come to me and pour thy woe 



ROSALIND AND HELEN. 



239 



Into this heart, full though it be, 

Aye overflowing with its own : 

I thought that grief had severed me 

From all beside who weep and groan; 

Its likeness upon earth to be. 

Its express image; but thou art 

More wretched. Sweet ! we will not 

part 
Henceforth, if death be not division; 
If so, the dead feel no contrition. 
But wilt thou hear, since last we parted 
All that has left me broken-hearted? 

ROSALIND. 

Yes, speak. The faintest stars are 

scarcely shorn 
Of their thin beams by that delusive morn 
Which sinks again in darkness, like the 

light 
Of early love, soon lost in total night. 

HELEN. 

Alas ! Italian winds are mild, 

But my bosom is cold — wintry cold — 

When the warm air weaves, among the 

fresh leaves. 
Soft music, my poor brain is wild, 
And I am weak like a nursling child, 
Though my soul with grief is gray and 

old. 

ROSALIND. 

Weep not at thine own words, though 

they must make 
Me weep. What is thy tale? 

HELEN. 

I fear 't will shake 
Thy gentle heart with tears. Thou well 
Rememberest when we met no more, 
And, though I dwelt with Lionel, 
That friendless caution pierced me sore 
With grief; a wound my spirit bore 
Indignantly; but when he died 
With him lay dead both hope and pride. 

Alas ! all hope is buried now. 
But then men dreamed the aged earth 
Was laboring in that mighty birth. 
Which m^any a poet and a sage 
Has aye foreseen — the happy age 



When truth and love shall dwell below 
Among the works and ways of men; 
Which on this world not power but will 
Even now is wanting to fulfil. 

Among mankind what thence befel 
Of strife, how vain, is known too well; 
When liberty's dear psean fell 
Mid murderous howls. To Lionel, 
Though of great wealth and lineage high, 
Yet thro' those dungeon walls there 

came 
Thy thrilling light, O Liberty ! 
And as the meteor's midnight flame 
Startles the dreamer, sun-like truth 
Flasht on his visionary youth, 
And filled him, not with love, but faith, 
And hope, and courage mute in death; 
For love and life in him were twins, 
Born at one birth : in every other 
First life, then love, its course begins. 
Though they be children of one mother; 
And so thro' this dark world they 

fleet 
Divided, till in death they meet : 
But he loved all things ever. Then 
He past amid the strife of men, 
And stood at the throne of armed power 
Pleading for a world of woe: 
Secure as one on a rock-built tower 
O'er the wrecks which the surge trails 

to and fro, 
Mid the passions wild of human kind 
He stood, like a spirit calming them; 
For, it was said, his words could bind 
Like music the lulled crowd, and stem 
That torrent of unquiet dream. 
Which mortals truth and reason deem, 
But is revenge, and fear, and pride. 
Joyous he was; and hope and peace 
On all who heard him did abide. 
Raining like dew from his sweet talk, 
As where the evening star may walk 
Along the brink of the gloomy seas. 
Liquid mists of splendor quiver. 
His very gestures toucht to tears 
The unpersuaded tyrant, never 
So moved before : his presence stung 
The torturers with their victim's pain. 
And none knew how; and thro' their 

ears, 
The subtle witchcraft of his tongue 
Unlockt the hearts of those who keep 



J40 



ROSALIND AND HELEN. 



Gold, the world's bond of slavery. 
Men wondered, and some sneered to see 
One sow what he could never reap : 
For he is rich, they said, and young, 
And might drink from the depths of 

luxury. 
If he seeks fame, fame never crowned 
The champion of a trampled creed: 
If he seeks power, power is enthroned 
Mid ancient rights and wrongs, to feed 
Which hungry wolves with praise and 

spoil, 
Those who would sit near power must 

toil; 
And such, there sitting, all may see. 
What seeks he? All that others seek 
He casts away, like a vile weed 
Which the sea casts unreturningly. 
That poor and hungry men should break 
The laws which wreak them toil and 

scorn. 
We understand; but Lionel 
We know is rich and nobly born. 
So wondered they: yet all men loved 
Young Lionel, though few approved; 
All but the priests, whose hatred fell 
Like the unseen blight of a smiling day. 
The withering honey dew, which clings 
Under the bright green buds of May, 
Whilst they unfold their emerald wings: 
For he made verses wild and queer 
On the strange creeds priests hold so 

dear. 
Because they bring them land and gold. 
Of devils and saints and all such gear. 
He made tales which whoso heard or read 
Would laugh till he were almost dead. 
So this grew a proverb : " Do n't get old 
Till Lionel's ' Banquet in Hell ' you 

hear, 
And then you will laugh yourself young 

again." 
So the priests hated him, and he 
Repaid their hate with cheerful glee. 

Ah, smiles and joyance quickly died, 
For public hope grew pale and dim 
In an altered time and tide. 
And in its wasting withered him, 
As a summer flower that blows too soon 
Droops in the smile of the waning moon, 
When it scatters through an April night 
The frozen dews of wrinkling blight. 



None now hoped more. Gray Power 

was seated 
Safely on her ancestral throne; 
And Faith, the Python, undefeated. 
Even to its blood-stained steps dragged 

on 
Her foul and wounded train, and men 
Were trampled and deceived again. 
And words and shows again could bind 
The wailing tribes of human kind 
In scorn and famine. Fire and blood 
Raged round the raging multitude, 
To fields remote by tyrants sent 
To be the scorned instrument 
With which they drag from mines of 

gore 
The chains their slaves yet ever wore : 
And in the streets men met each other. 
And by old altars and in halls, 
And smiled again at festivals. 
But each man found in his heart's 

brother 
Cold cheer; for all, though half de- 
ceived. 
The outworn creeds again believed. 
And the same round anew began. 
Which the weary world yet ever ran. 

Many then wept, not tears, but gall 
Within their hearts, like drops which fall 
Wasting the fountain-stone away. 
And in that dark and evil day 
Did all desires and thoughts, that claim 
Men's care — ambition, friendship, fame, 
Love, hope, though hope was now de- 
spair — 
Indue the colors of this change. 
As from the all-surrounding air 
The earth takes hues obscure and strange, 
When storm and earthquake linger there. 

And so, my friend, it then befel 
To many, most to Lionel, 
Whose hope was like the life of youth 
Within him, and when dead, became 
A spirit of unresting flame. 
Which goaded him in his distress 
Over the world's vast wilderness. 
Three years he left his native land. 
And on the fourth, when he returned. 
None knew him: he was stricken deep 
With some disease of mind, and turned 
Into aught unlike Lionel. 



ROSALIND AND HELEN. 



241 



On him, on whom, did he pause in 

sleep, 
Serenest smiles were wont to keep, 
And, did he wake, a winged band 
Of bright persuasions, which had fed 
On his sweet lips and liquid eyes, 
Kept their swift pinions half outspread, 
To do on men his least command; 
On him, whom once 't was paradise 
Even to behold, now misery lay : 
In his own heart 't was merciless, 
To all things else none may express 
Its innocence and tenderness. 

'Twas said that he had refuge sought 
In love from his unquiet thought 
In distant lands, and been deceived 
By some strange show; for there were 

found. 
Blotted with tears as those relieved 
By their own words are wont to do, 
These mournful verses on the ground, 
By all who read them blotted too. 

"How am I changed! my hopes were 
once like fire : 
I loved, and I believed that life was 
love. 
How am I lost ! on wings of swift desire 
Among Heaven's winds my spirit once 
did move. 
I slept, and silver dreams did aye inspire 
My liquid sleep : I woke, and did ap- 
prove 
All nature to my heart, and thought to 

make 
A paradise of earth for one sweet sake. 

*' I love, but I believe in love no more. 
I feel desire, but hope not. O, from 
sleep 
Most vainly must my weary brain im- 
plore 
Its long lost flattery now : I wake to 
I weep, 

['And sit through the long day gnawing 
the core 
Of my bitter heart, and, like a miser, 
keep, 
iSince none in what I feel take pain or 

pleasure, — 
, To my own soul its self -consuming treas- 
ure." 



He dwelt beside me near the sea: 

And oft in evening did we meet, 

When the waves, beneath the starlight, 

flee 
O'er the yellow sands with silver feet, 
And talkt : our talk was sad and sweet, 
Till slowly from his mien there past 
The desolation which it spoke; 
And smiles, — as when the lightning's 

blast 
Has parcht some heaven-delighting 

oak. 
The next spring shows leaves pale and 

rare. 
But like flowers delicate and fair, 
On its rent boughs, — again arrayed 
His countenance in tender light: 
His words grew subtile fire, which made 
The air his hearers breathed delight : 
His motions, like the winds, were free, 
Which bend the bright grass gracefully, 
Then fade away in circlets faint : 
And winged hope, on which upborne 
His soul seemed hovering in his eyes, 
Like some bright spirit newly born 
Floating amid the sunny skies. 
Sprang forth from his rent heart anew. 
Yet o'er his talk, and looks, and mien, 
Tempering their loveliness too keen. 
Past woe its shadow backward threw. 
Till like an exhalation, spread 
From flowers half drunk with evening 

dew. 
They did become infectious : sweet 
And subtile mists of sense and thought: 
Which wrapt us soon, when we might 

meet. 
Almost from our own looks and aught 
The wide world holds. And so, his 

mind 
Was healed, while mine grew sick with 

fear: 
For ever now his health declined. 
Like some frail bark which cannot bear 
The impulse of an altered wind. 
Though prosperous : and my heart grew 

full 
Mid its new joy of a new care : 
For his cheek became, not pale, but fair. 
As rose-o'ershadowed lilies are; 
And soon his deep and sunny hair. 
In this alone less beautiful. 
Like grass in tombs grew wild and rare. 



242 



ROSALIND AND HELEN. 



The blood in his translucent veins 

Beat, not like animal life, but love 

Seemed now its sullen springs to move, 

When life had failed, and all its pains: 

And sudden sleep would seize him oft 

Like death, so calm, but that a tear, 

His pointed eye-lashes between. 

Would gather in the light serene 

Of smiles, whose lustre bright and soft 

Beneath lay undulating there. 

His breath was like inconstant flame, 

As eagerly it went and came; 

And I hung o'er him in his sleep, 

Till, like an image in the lake 

Which rains disturb, my tears would 

break 
The shadow of that slumber deep : 
Then he would bid me not to weep, 
And say with flattery false, yet sweet, 
That death and he could never meet, 
If I would never part with him. 
And so we loved, and did unite 
All that in us was yet divided : 
For when he said, that many a rite, 
By men to bind but once provided, 
Could not be shared by him and me, 
Or they would kill him in their glee, 
I shuddered, and then laughing said — 
" We will have rites our faith to bind. 
But our church shall be the starry 

night, 
Our altar the grassy earth outspread, 
And our priest the muttering wind." 

'Twas sunset as I spoke: one star 

Had scarce burst forth, when from afar 

The ministers of misrule sent. 

Seized upon Lionel, and bore 

His chained limbs to a dreary tower. 

In the midst of a city vast and wide. 

For he, they said, from his mind had 

bent 
Against their gods keen blasphemy. 
For which, though his soul must roasted 

be 
In hell's red lakes immortally, 
Yet even on earth must he abide 
The vengeance of their slaves: a trial, 
I think, men call it. What avail 
Are prayers and tears, which chase denial 
From the fierce savage, nurst in hate? 
What the knit soul that pleading and 

pale 



Makes wan the quivering cheek, which 

late 
It painted with its own delight? 
We were divided. As I could, 
I stilled the tingling of my blood. 
And followed him in their despite, 
As a widow follows, pale and wild, 
The murderers and corse of her only 

child ; 
And when we came to the prison door 
And I prayed to share his dungeon floor 
With prayers which rarely have been 

spurned. 
And when men drove me forth and I 
Stared with blank frenzy on the sky, 
A farewell look of love he turned. 
Half calming me; then gazed awhile, 
As if thro' that black and massy pile, 
And thro' the crowd around him there, 
And thro' the dense and murky air. 
And the thronged streets, he did espy 
What poets know and prophesy; 
And said, with voice that made them 

shiver 
And clung like music in my brain. 
And which the mute walls spoke again 
Prolonging it with deepened strain : 
" Fear not the tyrants shall rule for- 
ever, 
Or the priests of the bloody faith; 
They stand on the brink of that mighty 

river, 
Whose waves they have tainted with 

death : 
It is fed from the depths of a thousand 

dells. 
Around them it foams, and rages, and 

swells. 
And their swords and their sceptres I 

floating see. 
Like wrecks in the surge of eternity." 

I dwelt beside the prison gate. 

And the strange crowd that out and in 

Past, some, no doubt, with mine own 

fate. 
Might have fretted me with its ceaseless 

din. 
But the fever of care was louder within. 
Soon, but too late, in penitence 
Or fear, his foes releast him thence: 
I saw his thin and languid form, 
As leaning on the jailer's arm, 



ROSALIND AND HELEN. 



243 



Whose hardened eyes grew moist the 

while, 
To meet his mute and faded smile, 
And hear his words of kind farewell, 
He tottered forth from his damp cell. 
Many had never wept before, 
From whom fast tears then gusht and 

fell: 
Many will relent no more, 
Who sobbed like infants then : aye, all 
Who thronged the prison's stony hall. 
The rulers or the slaves of law, 
Felt with a new surprise and awe 
That they were human, till strong shame 
Made them again become the same. 
The prison blood-hounds, huge and grim, 
From human looks the infection caught, 
And fondly croucht and fawned on 

him; 
And men have heard the prisoners say, 
Who in their rotting dungeons lay, 
That from that hour, throughout one 

day, 
The fierce despair and hate which kept 
Their trampled bosoms almost slept. 
When, like twin vultures, they hung 

feeding 
On each heart's wound, wide torn and 

bleeding, 
Because their jailer's rule, they thought. 
Grew merciful, like a parent's sway. 

I know not how, but we were free : 

And Lionel sate alone with me. 

As the carriage drove thro' the streets 

apace ; 
And we lookt upon each other's face; 
And the blood in our fingers intertwined 
Ran like the thoughts of a single mind, 
As the swift emotions went and came 
Thro' the veins of each united frame. 
So thro' the long, long streets we past 
Of the million-peopled City vast; 
Which is that desert, where each one 
Seeks his mate yet is alone. 
Beloved and sought and mourned of 

none; 
Until the clear blue sky was seen. 
And the grassy meadows bright and 

green. 
And then I sunk in his embrace, 
Fnclosing there a mighty space 
Of love: and so we travelled on 



By woods, and fields of yellow flowers. 

And towns, and villages, and towers, 

Day after day of happy hours. 

It was the azure time of June, 

When the skies are deep in the stainless 

noon. 
And the warm and fitful breezes shake 
The fresh green leaves of the hedge-row 

brier. 
And there were odors then to make 
The very breath we did respire 
A liquid element, whereon 
Our spirits, like delighted things 
That walk the air on subtle wings, 
Floated and mingled far away. 
Mid the warm winds of the sunny day. 
And when the evening star came forth 
Above the curve of the new bent moon, 
And light and sound ebbed from the 

earth. 
Like the tide of the full and weary sea 
To the depths of its tranquillity, 
Our natures to its own repose 
Did the earth's breathless sleep attune: 
Like flowers, which on each other close 
Their languid leaves when daylight's 

gone. 
We lay, till new emotions came. 
Which seemed to make each mortal 

frame 
One soul of interwoven flame, 
A life in life, a second birth 
In worlds diviner far than earth, 
Which, like two strains of harmony 
That mingle in the silent sky 
Then slowly disunite, past by 
And left the tenderness of tears, 
A soft oblivion of all fears, 
A sweet sleep : so we travelled on 
Till we came to the home of Lionel, 
Among the mountains wild and lone. 
Beside the hoary western sea. 
Which near the verge of the echoing 

shore 
The massy forest shadowed o'er. 

The ancient steward, with hair all 

hoar, 
As we alighted, wept to see 
His master changed so fearfully; 
And the old man's sobs did waken me 
From my dream of unremaining glad- 
ness; 



244 



ROSALIND AND HELEN. 



The truth flasht o'er me like quick 

madness 
When I lookt, and saw that there was 

death 
On Lionel : yet day by day 
He lived, till fear grew hope and faith, 
And in my soul I dared to say, 
Nothing so bright can pass away : 
Death is dark, and foul, and dull, 
But he is — O how beautiful ! 
Yet day by day he grew more weak. 
And his sweet voice, when he might 

speak, 
Which ne'er was loud, became more 

low; 
And the light which flasht through his 

waxen cheek 
Grew faint, as the rose-like hues which 

flow 
From sunset o'er the Alpine snow : 
And death seemed not like death in him, 
For the spirit of life o'er every limb 
Lingered, a mist of sense and thought. 
When the summer wind faint odors 

brought 
From mountain flowers, even as it past 
His cheek would change, as the noon- 
day sea 
Which the dying breeze sweeps fitfully. 
If but a cloud the sky o'ercast. 
You might see his color come and go. 
And the softest strain of music made 
Sweet smiles, yet sad, arise and fade 
Amid the dew of his tender eyes; 
And the breath, with intermitting flow, 
Made his pale lips quiver and part. 
You might hear the beatings of his 

heart, 
Quick, but not strong; and with my 

tresses 
When oft he playfully would bind 
In the bowers of mossy lonelinesses 
His neck, and win me so to mingle 
In the sweet depth of woven caresses, 
And our faint limbs were intertwined, 
Alas ! the unquiet life did tingle 
From mine own heart through every 

vein. 
Like a captive in dreams of liberty, 
Who beats the walls of his stony cell. 
But his, it seemed already free. 
Like the shadow of fire surrounding me ! 
On my faint eyes and limbs did dwell 



That spirit as it past, till soon. 

As a frail cloud wandering o'er the moon, 

Beneath its light invisible. 

Is seen when it folds its gray wings 

again 
To alight on midnight's dusky plain, 
I lived and sav>^, and the gathering soul 
Past from beneath that strong con 

trol. 
And I fell on a life which was sick with. 

fear 
Of all the woe that now I bear. 

Amid a bloomless myrtle wood. 
On a green and sea-girt promontory, 
Not far from where we dwelt, there 

stood 
In record of a sweet sad story, 
An altar and a temple bright 
Circled by steps, and o'er the gate 
Was sculptured, "To Fidelity;" 
And in the shrine an image sate. 
All veiled : but there was seen the light 
Of smiles, which faintly could express 
A mingled pain and tenderness 
Thro' that ethereal drapery. 
The left hand held the head, the right — - 
Beyond the veil, beneath the skin. 
You might see the nerves quivering 

within — 
Was forcing the point of a barbed dart 
Into its side-convulsing heart. 
An unskilled hand, yet one informed 
With genius, had the marble warmed 
With that pathetic life. This tale 
It told : A dog had from the sea. 
When the tide was raging fearfully, 
Dragged Lionel's mother, weak and pale, 
Then died beside her on the sand. 
And she that temple thence had planned; 
But it was Lionel's own hand 
Had wrought the image. Each new moon 
That lady did, in this lone fane. 
The rites of a religion sweet, 
Whose god was in her heart and brain : 
The seasons' loveliest flowers were 

strewn 
On the marble floor beneath her feet. 
And she brought crowns of sea-buds 

white. 
Whose odor is so sweet and faint, 
And weeds, like branching chrysolite, 
Woven in devices fine and quaint, 



ROSALIND AND HELEN. 



245 



And tears from her brown eyes did slain 

The altar: need but look upon 

That dying statue, fair and wan, 

If tears should cease, to weep again: 

And rare Arabian odors came, 

Thro' the myrtle copses steaming 

thence 
From the hissing frankincense. 
Whose smoke, wool-white as ocean foam. 
Hung in dense flocks beneath the dome, 
That ivory dome, whose azure night 
With golden stars, like heaven, was 

bright 
O'er the split cedar's pointed flame; 
And the lady's harp would kindle there 
The melody of an old air. 
Softer than sleep; the villagers 
Mixt their religion up with hers, 
And as they listened round, shed tears. 

One eve he led me to this fane: 

Daylight on its last purple cloud 

Was lingering gray, and soon her strain 

The nightingale began; now loud, 

Climbing in circles the windless sky, 

Now dying music; suddenly 

'T is scattered in a thousand notes, 

And now to the hushed ear it floats 

Like field-smells known in infancy. 

Then failing, soothes the air again. 

"We sate within that temple lone. 

Pavilioned round with Parian stone : 

His mother's harp stood near, and oft 

I had awakened music soft 

Amid its wires : the nightingale 

Was pausing in her heaven-taught tale : 

"Now drain the cup," said Lionel, 

•'Which the poet-bird has crowned so well 

With the wine of her bright and liquid 

song! 
Heardst thou not, sweet words among 
That heaven-resounding minstrelsy? 
Heardst thou not, that those who die 
Awake in a world of ecstasy? 
That love, when limbs are interwoven, 
And sleep, when the night of life is 

cloven, 
And thought, to the world's dim bound- 
aries clinging, 
And music, when one beloved is singing. 
Is death? Let us drain right joyously 
The cup which the sweet bird fills for 
me." 



He paused, and to my lips he bent 
His own : like spirit his words went 
Through all my limbs with the speed of 

fire; 
And his keen eyes, glittering through 

mine. 
Filled me with the flame divine. 
Which in their orbs was burning far. 
Like the light of an unmeasured star, 
In the sky of midnight dark and deep: 
Yes, 't was his soul that did inspire 
Sounds, which my skill could ne'er 

awaken ;- 
And first, I felt my fingers sweep 
The harp, and a long quivering cry 
Burst from my lips in symphony : 
The dusk and solid air was shaken, 
As swift and swifter the notes came 
From my touch, that wandered like 

quick flame. 
And from my bosom, laboring 
With some unutterable thing: 
The awful sound of my own voice 

made 
My faint lips tremble, in some mood 
Of wordless thought Lionel stood 
So pale, that even beside his cheek 
The snowy column from its shade 
Caught whiteness : yet his countenance 
Raised upward, burned with radiance 
Of spirit-piercing joy, whose light. 
Like the moon struggling thro' the 

night 
Of whirlwind-rifted clouds, did break 
With beams that might not be confined. 
I paused, but soon his gestures kindled 
New power, as by the moving wind 
The waves are lifted, and my song 
To low soft notes now changed and 

dwindled, 
And from the twinkling wires among, 
My languid fingers drew and flung 
Circles of life-dissolving sound. 
Yet faint : in aery rings they bound 
My Lionel, who, as every strain 
Grew fainter but more sweet, his mien 
Sunk with the sound relaxedly; 
And slowly now he turned to me, 
As slowly faded from his face 
That awful joy: with look serene 
He was soon drawn to my embrace. 
And my wild song then died away 
In murmurs : words I dare not say, 



246 



ROSALIND AND HELEN. 



We mixt, and on his lips mine fed 
Till they methought felt still and cold; 
" What is it with thee, love? " I said: 
No word, no look, no motion! yes, 
There was a change, but spare to guess. 
Nor let that moment's hope be told. 
I lookt, — and knew that he was dead. 
And fell, as the eagle on the plain 
Falls when life deserts her brain. 
And the mortal lightning is veiled again. 

O that I were now dead ! but such 
(Did they not, love, demand too much, 
Those dying murmurs?) he forbade. 

that I once again were mad ! 
And yet, dear Rosalind, not so, 
For I would live to share thy woe. 
Sweet boy, did I forget thee too? 
Alas, we know not what we do 
When we speak words. 

No memory more 
Is in my mind of that seashore. 
Madness came on me, and a troop 
Of misty shapes did seem to sit 
Beside me, on a vessel's poop. 
And the clear north wind was driving it. 
Then I heard strange tongues, and saw 

strange flowers. 
And the stars methought grew unlike ours, 
And the azure sky and the stormless sea 
Made me believe that I had died. 
And waked in a world, which wasto me 
Drear hell, though heaven to all beside: 
Then a dead sleep fell on my mind, 
Whilst animal life many long years 
Had rescue from a chasm of tears; 
And when I woke, I wept to find 
That the same lady, bright and wise. 
With silver locks and quick brown eyes. 
The mother of my Lionel, 
Had tended me in my distress, 
And died some months before. Nor less 
Wonder, but far more peace and joy 
Brought in that hour my lovely boy; 
For through that trance my soul had well 
The impress of thy being kept; 
And if I waked, or if I slept, 
No doubt, though memory faithless be, 
Thy image ever dwelt on me; 
And thus, O Lionel, like thee 
Is our sweet child. 'T is sure most 

strange 

1 knew not of so great a change, 



As that which gave him birth, who now 
Is all the solace of my woe. 

That Lionel great wealth had left 
By will to me, and that of all 
The ready lies of law bereft 
My child and me, might well befaL 
But let me think not of the scorn, 
Which from the meanest I have borne, 
When, for my child's beloved sake, 
I mixt with slaves, to vindicate 
The very laws themselves do make : 
Let me not say scorn is my fate, 
Lest I be proud, suffering the same 
With those who live in deathless fame. 

She ceased. — " Lo, where red morning 
thro' the wood 

Is burning o'er the dew; " said Rosalind. 

And with these words they rose, and 
towards the flood 

Of the blue lake, beneath the leaves now 
wind 

With equal steps and fingers interwined: 

Thence to a lonely dwelling, where the 
shore 

Is shadowed with steep rocks, and cy- 
presses 

Cleave with their dark green cones the 
silent skies, 

And with their shadows the clear depths 
below. 

And where a little terrace from its bowers, 

Of blooming myrtle and faint lemon- 
flowers. 

Scatters its sense-dissolving fragrance 
o'er 

The liquid marble of the windless lake; 

And where the aged forest's limbs look 
hoar, 

Under the leaves which their green gar- 
ments make. 

They come : 't is Helen's home, and clean 
and white. 

Like one which tyrants spare on our own 
land 

In some such solitude, its casements 
bright 

Shone through their vine-leaves in the 
morning sun. 

And even within 't was scarce like Italy. 

And when she saw how all things there 
were planned, 



NOTE TO ROSALIND AND HELEN 



247 



As in an English home, dim memory 
Disturbed poor Rosalind : she stood as 

one 
Whose mind is where his body cannot be, 
Till Helen led her where her child yet 

slept. 
And said, "Observe, that brow was 

Lionel's, 
Those lips were his, and so he ever kept 
One arm in sleep, pillowing his head 

with it. 
You cannot see his eyes, they are two 

wells 
Of liquid love : let us not wake him yet." 
But Rosalind could bear no more, and 

wept 
A shower of burning tears, which fell 

upon 
His face, and so his opening lashes shone 
With tears unlike his own, as he did leap 
In sudden wonder from his innocent 

sleep. 

So Rosalind and Helen lived together 

Thenceforth, changed in all else, yet 
friends again. 

Such as they were, when o'er the moun- 
tain heather 
I They wandered in their youth, through 
i sun and rain. 

! And after many years, for human things 
I Change even like the ocean and the 

wind, 
I Her daughter was restored to Rosalind, 
; And in their circle thence some visitings 

Of joy mid their new calm would inter- 
vene: 

A lovely child she was, of looks serene. 

And motions which o'er things indiffer- 
ent shed 

The grace and gentleness from whence 
they came. 

And Helen's boy grew with her, and 
they fed 

From the same flowers of thought, until 
each mind 

Like springs which mingle in one flood 
became. 

And in their union soon their parents saw 

The shadow of the peace denied to them. 

And Rosalind, for when the living stem 

Is cankered in its heart, the tree must 
fall. 



Died ere her time; and with deep grief 

and awe 
The pale survivors followed her remains 
Beyond the region of dissolving rains, 
Up the cold mountain she was wont to 

call 
Her tomb; and on Chiavenna's precipice 
They raised a pyramid of lasting ice. 
Whose polisht sides, ere day had yet 

begun. 
Caught the first glow of the unrisen sun. 
The last, when it had sunk; and thro' 

the night 
The charioteers of Arctos wheeled round 
Its glittering point, as seen from Helen's 

home. 
Whose sad inhabitants each year would 

come, 
With willing steps climbing that rugged 

height. 
And hang long locks of hair, and gar- 
lands bound 
With amaranth flowers, which, in the 

clime's despite, 
Filled the frore air with unaccustomed 

light: 
Such flowers, as in the wintry memory 

bloom 
Of one friend left, adorned that frozen 

tomb. 

Helen, whose spirit was of softer mould, 
Whose sufferings too were less, death 

slowlier led 
Into the peace of his dominion cold: 
She died among her kindred, being old. 
And know, that if love die not in the dead 
As in the living, none of mortal kind 
Are blest, as now Helen and Rosalind. 



NOTE BY MRS. SHELLEY. 

Rosalind and Helen was begun at Mar- 
low, and thrown aside — till I found it; 
and, at my request, it was completed. 
Shelley had no care for any of his poems 
that did not emanate from the depths of 
his mind and develop some high or ab- 
struse truth. When he does touch on 
human life and the human heart, no pic- 
tures can be more faithful, more delicate, 
more subtle, or more pathetic. He never 



248 



J (J LI AN AND MADDALO. 



mentioned Love but he shed a grace bor- 
rowed from his own nature, that scarcely 
any other poet has bestowed on that pas- 
sion. When he spoke of it as the law of 
life, which inasmuch as we rebel against 
we err and injure ourselves and others, 
he promulgated that which he considered 
an irrefragable truth. In his eyes it was 
the essence of our being, and all woe and 
pain arose from the war made against it 
by selfishness, or insensibility, or mis- 
take. By reverting in his mind to this 
first principle, he discovered the source 
of many emotions, and could disclose the 
secret of all hearts; and his delineations 
of passion and emotion touch the finest 
chords of our nature. 

Rosalind and Helen was finished dur- 
ing the summer of i8i8, while we were 
at the baths of Lucca. 



JULIAN AND MADDALO. 

A CONVERSATION. 

PREFACE. 

The meadows with fresh streams, the bees with 

thyme, 
The goats with the green leaves of budding 

Spring, 
Are saturated not— nor Love with tears. 

Virgil's Gallns. 

Count Maddalo is a Venetian noble- 
man of ancient family and of great for- 
tune, who, without mixing much in the 
society of his countrymen, resides chiefly 
at his magnificent palace in that city. 
He is a person of the most consummate 
genius, and capable, if he would direct 
his energies to such an end, of becoming 
the redeemer of his degraded country. 
But it is his weakness to be proud: he 
derives, from a comparison of his own 
extraordinary mind with the dwarfish 
intellects that surround him, an intense 
apprehension of the nothingness of human 
life. His passions and his powers are 
incomparably greater than those of other 
men; and, instead of the latter having 
been employed in curbing the former, 
they have mutually lent each other 



strength. His ambition preys upon it- 
self, for want of objects which it can 
consider worthy of exertion. I say that 
Maddalo is proud, because I can find no 
other word to express the concentred 
and impatient feelings which consume 
him ; but it is on his own hopes and 
affections only that he seems to trample, 
for in social life no human being can be 
more gentle, patient, and unassuming 
than Maddalo. He is cheerful, frank, 
and witty. His more serious conversa- 
tion is a sort of intoxication; men are 
held by it as by a spell. He has trav- 
elled much ; and there is an inexpressible 
charm in his relation of his adventures 
in different countries. 

Julian is an Englishman of good family, 
passionately attached to those philosophi- 
cal notions which assert the power of 
man over his own mind, and the immense 
improvements of which, by the extinc- 
tion of certain moral superstitions, human 
society may be yet susceptible. Without 
concealing the evil in the world, he is 
forever speculating how good rnay be 
made superior. He is a complete infidel, 
and a scoffer at all things reputed holy; 
and Maddalo takes a wicked pleasure in 
drawing out his taunts against religion. 
What Maddalo thinks on these matters 
is not exactly known. Julian, in spite of 
his heterodox opinions, is conjectured by 
his friends to possess some good qualities. 
How far this is possible the pious reader 
will determine. Julian is rather serious. 

Of the Maniac I can give no informa- 
tion. He seems, by his own account, to 
have been disappointed in love. He was 
evidently a very cultivated and amiable 
person when in his right senses. His 
story, told at length, might be like many 
other stories of the same kind : the un- 
connected exclamations of his agony will 
perhaps be found a sufficient comment 
for the text of every heart. 

I RODE one evening with Count Maddalo 
Upon the bank of land which breaks the 

fiow 
Of Adria towards Venice. A bare strand 
Of hillocks, heaped from ever-shifting 

sand. 



JULIAN AND MADDALO. 



249 



Matted with thistles and amphibious 

weeds, 
Such as from earth's embrace the salt 

ooze breeds, 
Is this; an uninhabited sea-side, 
Which the lone fisher; when his nets are 

dried, 
Abandons; and no other object breaks 
The waste but one dwarf tree and some 

few stakes 
Broken and unrepaired, and the tide 

•■ makes 
A narrow space of level sand thereon, 
Where 't was our wont to ride while day 

went down. 
This ride was my delight. I love all 

waste 
And solitary places; where we taste 
The pleasure of believing what we see 
Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be : 
And such was this wide ocean, and this 

shore 
More barren than its billows; and yet 

more 
Than all, with a remembered friend I 

love 
To ride as then I rode; — for the winds 

drove 
The living spray along the sunny air 
Into our faces; the blue heavens were 

bare, 
Stript to their depths by the awakening 

north; 
And, from the waves, sound like delight 

broke forth 
Harmonizing with solitude, and sent 
Into our hearts aerial merriment. 
So, as we rode, we talkt; and the swift 

thought. 
Winging itself with laughter, lingered 

not. 
But flew from brain to brain; such glee 

was ours. 
Charged with light memories of remem- 
bered hours. 
None slow enough for sadness: till we 

came 
Homeward, which always makes the 

spirit tame. 
This day had been cheerful but cold, 

and now 
The sun was sinking, and the wind 

also. 



Our talk grew somewhat serious, as may 

be 
Talk interrupted with such raillery 
As mocks itself, because it cannot scorn 
The thoughts it would extinguish : — 

't was forlorn, 
Yet pleasing, such as once, so poets tell. 
The devils held within the dales of Hell 
Concerning God, freewill and destiny : 
Of all that earth has been or yet may be. 
All that vain men imagine or believe, 
Or hope can paint or suffering may 

achieve. 
We descanted, and I (for ever still 
Is it not wise to make the best of ill?) 
Argued against despondency, but pride 
Made my companion take the darker 

side. 
The sense that he was greater than his 

kind 
Had struck, methinks, his eagle spirit 

blind 
By gazing on its own exceeding light. 
Meanwhile the sun paused ere it should 

alight, 
Over the horizon of the mountains. — 

Oh, 
How beautiful is sunset, when the glow 
Of Heaven descends upon a land like 

thee. 
Thou Paradise of exiles, Italy ! 
Thy mountains, seas and vineyards and 

the towers 
Of cities they encircle ! — it was ours 
To stand on thee, beholding it; and 

then, 
Just where we had dismounted, the 

Count's men 
Were waiting for us with the gondola. — 
As those who pause on some delightful 

way 
Tho' bent on pleasant pilgrimage, we 

stood 
Looking upon the evening, and the flood 
Which lay between the city and the shore 
Paved with the image of the sky. The 

hoar 
And aery Alps towards the North ap- 
peared 
Thro' mist, a heaven-sustaining bulwark 

reared 
Between the East and West; and half 

the sky 



250 



JULIAN AND MADDALO. 



Was rooft with clouds of rich em- 
blazonry 
Dark purple at the zenith, which still 

grew 
Down the steep West into a wondrous 

hue 
Brighter than burning gold, even to the 

rent 
Where the swift sun yet paused in his 

descent 
Among the many-folded hills: they were 
Those famous Euganean hills, which 

bear 
As seen from Lido thro' the harbor piles 
The likeness of a clump of peaked isles — 
And then, as if the Earth and Sea had 

been 
Dissolved into one lake of fire, were 

seen 
Those mountains towering as from waves 

of flame 
Around the vaporous sun, from which 

there came 
The inmost purple spirit of light, and 

made 
Their very peaks transparent. ** Ere 

it fade," 
Said my companion, " I will show you 

soon 
A better station." — So, o'er the lagune 
We glided, and from that funereal bark 
I leaned, and saw the city, and could 

mark 
How from their many isles in evening's 

gleam 
Its temples and its palaces did seem 
Like fabrics of enchantment piled to 

Heaven. 
I was about to speak, when — "We are 

even 
Now at the point I meant," said 

Maddalo, 
And bade the gondolieri cease to row. 
"Look, Julian, on the West, and listen 

well 
If you hear not a deep and heavy 

bell." 
I lookt, and saw between us and the 

sun 
A building on an island; such a one 
As age to age might add, for uses vile, 
A windowless, deformed and dreary 

pile; 



And on the top an open tower, where 

hung 
A bell, which in the radiance swayed 

and swung; 
We could just hear its hoarse and iron 

tongue ; 
The broad sun sunk behind it, and it 

tolled 
In strong and black relief. — " What we 

behold 
Shall be the madhouse and its belfry 

tower," 
Said Maddalo, "and ever at this hour 
Those who may cross the water, hear 

that bell 
Which calls the maniacs each one from 

his cell 
To vespers." — "As much skill as need 

to pray 
In thanks or hope for their dark lot 

have they 
To their stern maker," I replied. "O 

ho! 
You talk as in years past," said Mad- 
dalo. 
"'Tis strange men change not. You 

were ever still 
Among Christ's flock a perilous infidel, 
A wolf for the meek lambs — if you 

can't swim 
Beware of Providence." I lookt on him, 
But the gay smile had faded in his eye, 
" And such," — he cried, " is our mor- 

tahty. 
And this must be the emblem and the sign 
Of what should be eternal and divine ! — 
And like that black and dreary bell, the 

soul 
Hung in a heaven-illumined tower, must 

toll 
Our thoughts and our desires to meet 

below 
Round the rent heart and pray — as 

madmen do 
For what? they know not, till the night 

of death 
As sunset that strange vision, severeth 
Our memory from itself, and us from all 
We sought and yet were baffled." I 

recal 
The sense of what he said, altho' I mar 
The force of his expressions. The broad • 

star I 



JULIAN AND MADDALO. 



251 



Of day meanwhile had sunk behind the 

hill, 
And the black bell became invisible, 
And the red tower looked gray, and all 

between 
The churches, ships and palaces were 

seen 
Huddled in gloom; — into the purple 

sea * 
The orange hues of heaven sunk silently. 
We hardly spoke, and soon the gondola 
Conveyed me to my lodgings by the 

way. 
The following morn was rainy, cold 

and dim. 
Ere Maddalo arose, I called on him. 
And whilst I waited with his child I 

played; 
A lovelier toy sweet Nature never made, 
A serious, subtle, wild, yet gentle being. 
Graceful without design, and unforesee- 

ing, 
With eyes — oh speak not of her eyes! 

— which seem 
Twin mirrors of Italian Heaven, yet 

gleam 
With such deep meaning, as we never see 
But in the human countenance. With 

me 
She was a special favorite : I had nurst 
Her fine and feeble limbs when she 

came first 
To this bleak world; and she yet seemed 

to know 
On second sight her ancient playfellow, 
Less changed than she was by six months 

or so; 
For after her first, shyness was worn out 
We sate there, rolling billiard balls about. 
When the Count entered. Salutations 

past; 
*' The word you spoke last night might 

well have cast 
A darkness on my spirit — if man be 
The passive thing you say, I should not 

see 
Much harm in the religions and old saws 
(Tho' I may never own such leaden 

laws) 
Which break a teachless nature to the 

yoke : 
Mine is another faith" — thus much I 

spoke 



And noting he replied not, added: 

"See 
This lovely child, blithe, innocent and 

free. 
She spends a happy time with little care 
While we to such sick thoughts subjected 

are 
As came on you last night. — It is our 

will 
Which thus enchains us to permitted 

ill — 
We might be otherwise — we might be 

all 
We dream of, happy, high, majestical. 
Where is the love, beauty, and truth we 

seek 
But in our mind? and if we were not 

weak 
Should we be less in deed than in 

desire? " 
"Ay, if we were not weak — and we 

aspire 
How vainly to be strong! " said Mad- 
dalo: 
"You talk Utopia." "It remains to 

know," 
I then rejoined, " and those who try may 

find 
How strong the chains are which our 

spirit bind; 
Brittle perchance as straw . . . We are 

assured 
Much may be conquered, much may be 

endured 
Of what degrades and crushes us. We 

know 
That we have power over ourselves to 

do 
And suffer — what, we know not till we 

try; 
But something nobler than to live and 

die — 
So taught those kings of old philosophy. 
Who reigned, before Religion made 

men blind; 
And those who suffer with their suffering 

kind 
Yet feel their faith, religion." "My 

dear friend," 
Said Maddalo, "my judgment will not 

bend 
To your opinion, tho' I think you might 
Make such a system refutation-tight 



^52 



JULIAN AND MADDALO. 



As far as words go. I knew one like 

you 
Who to this city came some months ago, 
With whom I argued in this sort, and he 
Is now gone mad, — and so he answered 

me, — 
Poor fellow ! But if you would like to 

go 

We'll visit him, and his wild talk will 
show 

How vain are such aspiring theories." 

" I hope to prove the induction other- 
wise. 

And that a want of that true theory, 
still. 

Which seeks a ' soul of goodness ' in 
things ill, 

Or in himself or others, has thus bowed 

His being — there are some by nature 
proud. 

Who patient in all else demand but 
this — 

To love and be beloved with gentle- 
ness; 

And being scorned, what wonder if they 
die 

Some living death? this is not destiny 

But man's own wilful ill." 

As thus I spoke 

Servants announced the gondola, and we 

Through the fa:st-falling rain and high- 
wrought sea 

Sailed to the island where the madhouse 
stands. 

We disembarkt. The clap of tortured 
hands, 

Fierce yells and bowlings and lament- 
ings keen. 

And laughter where complaint had 
merrier been, 

Moans, shrieks, and curses, and blas- 
pheming prayers 

Accosted us. We climbed the oozy 
stairs 

Into an old courtyard. I heard on high. 

Then, fragments of most touching melody, 

But looking up saw not the singer there. 

Through the black bars in the tempestu- 
ous air 

I saw, like weeds on a wreckt palace 
growing, 

Long tangled locks flung wildly forth, 
and flowing, 



Of those who on a sudden were beguiled 
Into strange silence, and lookt forth 

and smiled 
Hearing sweet sounds. — Then I : " Me- 

thinks there were 
A cure of these with patience and kind 

care, 
If music can thus move . . . But what 

is he 
Whom we seek here?" "Of his sad 

history 
I know but this," said Maddalo, "he 

came 
To Venice a dejected man, and fame 
Said he was wealthy, or he had been 

so; 
Some thought the loss of fortune wrought 

him woe; 
But he was ever talking in such sort 
As you do — far more sadly; he seemed 

hurt. 
Even as a man with his peculiar wrong. 
To hear l)ut of the oppression of the 

strong. 
Or those absurd deceits (I think with 

you 
In some respects, you know) which carry 

through 
The excellent impostors of this earth 
When they outface detection: he had 

worth, 
Poor fellow ! but a humorist in his 



way 



"Alas, what drove him mad?" "I 

cannot say; 
A lady came with him from France, and 

when 
She left him and returned, he wandered 

then 
About yon lonely isles of desert sand 
Till he grew wild — he had no cash or 

land 
Remaining, — the police had brought 

him here — 
Some fancy took him and he would not 

bear 
Removal; so I fitted up for him 
Those rooms beside the sea, to please 

his whim. 
And sent him busts and books and urns 

for flowers 
Which had adorned his life in happier 

hours, 



JULIAN AND MADDALO. 



253 



And instruments of music. — You may 

guess 
A stranger could do little more or less 
For one so gentle and unfortunate : 
And those are his sweet strains which 

charm the weight 
From madmen's chains, and make this 

Hell appear 
A heaven of sacred silence, husht to 

hear." — 
*' Nay, this was kind of you — he had 

no claim. 
As the world says." — " None — but the 

very same 
Which I on all mankind were I as he 
Fallen to such deep reverse; — his 

melody 
Is interrupted — now we hear the din 
Of madmen, shriek on shriek again 

begin; 
Let us now visit him; after this strain 
He ever communes with himself again. 
And sees nor hears not any." Having 

said 
These words we called the keeper, and 

he led 
To an apartment opening on the sea. — 
There the poor wretch was sitting 

mournfully 
Near a piano, his pale fingers twined 
One with the otlier, and the ooze and 

wind 
Rusht through an open casement, and 

did sway 
His hair, and starred it with the brackish 

spray; 
His head was leaning on a music book, 
And he was muttering, and his lean 

limbs shook; 
His lips were prest against a folded 

leaf 
In hue too beautiful for health, and grief 
Smiled in their motions as they lay 

apart — 
As one who wrought from his own fervid 

heart 
The eloquence o( passion, soon he raised 
His sad meek face and eyes lustrous and 

glazed 
And spoke — sometimes as one who 

wrote and thought 
His words might move some heart that 

heeded not 



If sent to distant lands: and then as one 
Reproaching deeds never to be undone 
With wondering self-compassion; then 

his speech 
Was lost in grief, and then his words 

came each 
Unmodulated, cold, expressionless, — 
But that from one jarred accent you 

might guess 
It was despair made them so uniform : 
And all the while the loud and gusty 

storm 
Hist thro' the window, and we stood 

behind 
Stealing his accents from the envious 

wind 
Unseen. I yet remember what he said 
Distinctly : such impression his words 

made. 

"Month after month," he cried, "to 

bear this load 
And as a jade urged by the whip and 

goad 
To drag life on, which like a heavy chain 
Lengthens behind with many a link of 

pain ! — 
And not to speak my grief — O not to 

dare 
To give a human voice to my despair, 
But live and move, and, wretched thing \ 

smile on 
As if I never went aside to groan. 
And wear this mask of falsehood even to 

those 
Who are most dear — not for my own 

repose — 
Alas ! no scorn or pain or hate could be 
So heavy as that falsehood is to me — 
But that I cannot bear more altered faces 
Than needs must be, more changed and 

cold embraces. 
More misery, disappointment, and mis- 
trust 
To own me for their father . . . Would 

the dust 
Were covered in upon my body now ! 
That the life ceast to toil within my 

brow ! 
And then these thoughts would at the 

least be fled; 
Let us not fear such pain can vex the 

dead. 



254 



JULIAN AND MADDALO. 



" What Power delights to torture us? 

I know 
That to myself I do not wholly owe 
What now I suffer, tho' in part I may. 
Alas ! none strewed sweet flowers upon 

the way 
Where, wandering heedlessly, I met pale 

Pain, 
My shadow, which will leave me not 

again. — 
If I have erred, there was no joy in error. 
But pain and insult and unrest and terror; 
I have not as some do, bought penitence 
With pleasure, and a dark yet sweet 

offence, 
For then, if love and tenderness and truth 
Had overlived hope's momentary youth, 
My creed should have redeemed me from 

repenting; 
But loathed scorn and outrage unrelent- 
ing, 
Met love excited by far other seeming 
Until the end was gained ... as one 

from dreaming 
Of sweetest peace, I woke, and found 

my state 

Such as it is. 

" O Thou, my spirit's mate 
Who, for thou art compassionate and 

wise, 
Wouldst pity me from thy most gentle 

eyes 
If this sad writing thou shouldst ever see — 
My secret groans must be unheard by 

thee, 
Thou wouldst weep tears bitter as blood 

to know 
Thy lost friend's incommunicable woe. 

'* Ye few by whom my nature has been 
weighed 

In friendship, let me not that name de- 
grade 

By placing on your hearts the secret load 

Which crushes mine to dust. There is 
one road 

To peace and that is truth, which follow 
ye ! 

Love sometimes leads astray to misery. 

Yet think not tho' subdued — and I may 
well 

Say that I am subdued — that the full 
hell 



Within me would infect the untainted 

breast 
Of sacred nature with its own unrest; 
As some perverted beings think to find 
In scorn or hate a medicine for the mind 
Which scorn or hate hath wounded — O 

how vain ! 
The dagger heals not but may rend 

again . . . 
Believe that I am ever still the same 
In creed as in resolve, and what may 

tame 
My heart, must leave the understanding 

free, 
Or all would sink in this keen agony ; 
Nor dream that I will join the vulgar cry; 
Or with my silence sanction tyranny; 
Or seek a moment's shelter from my 

pain 
In any madness which the world calls 

gain, 
Ambition or revenge or thoughts as 

stern 
As those which make me what I am; or 

turn 
To avarice or misanthropy or lust . . . 
Heap on me soon O grave, thy welcome 

dust! 
Till then the dungeon may demand its 

prey. 
And Poverty and Shame may meet and 

say — 
Halting beside me on the public way — 
' That love-devoted youth is ours — let's 

sit 
Beside him — he may live some six 

months yet.' 
Or the red scaffold, as our country bends, 
May ask some willing victim, or ye friends 
May fall under some sorrow which this 

heart 
Or hand may share or vanquish or avert; 
I am prepared — in truth with no proud 

joy — 
To do or suffer aught, as when a boy 
I did devote to justice and to love 
My nature, worthless now ! . . . 

" I must remove 
A veil from my pent mind. 'Tis torn 

aside ! 
O, pallid as Death's dedicated bride, 
Thou mockery which art sitting by my 

side. 



JULIAN AND MADDALO. 



= bo 



Am I not wan like thee? at the grave's 

call 
I haste, invited to thy wedding-ball 
To greet the ghastly paramour, for whom 
Thou hast deserted me . . . and made 

the tomb 
Thy bridal bed . . . But I beside your 

feet 
Will lie and watch ye from my winding 

sheet — 
Thus . . . wide awake tho' dead . . . 

yet stay, O stay ! 
Go not so soon — I know not what I 

say — 
Hear but my reasons ... I am mad, I 

fear, 
My fancy is o'erwrought . . . thou art 

not here . . . 
Pale art thou, 'tis most true . . . but 

thou art gone, 
Thy work is finisht ... I am left 

alone ! — 

*' Nay, was it I who wooed thee to 

this breast 
Which, like a serpent thou envenomest 
As in repayment of the warmth it lent? 
Didst thou not seek me for thine own 

content? 
Did not thy love awaken mine? I 

thought 
That thou wert she who said ' You kiss 

me not 
Ever; I fear you do not love me now' — 
In truth I loved even to my overthrow 
Her, who would fain forget these words : 

but they 
Cling to her mind, and cannot pass away. 

"You say that I am proud — that 

when I speak 
My lip is tortured with the wrongs which 

break 
The spirit it expresses . . . Never one 
Humbled himself before, as I have done ! 
Even the instinctive worm on which we 

tread 
Turns, tho' it wound not — then with 

prostrate head 
Sinks in the dust and writhes like me — 

and dies? 
No : wears a living death of agonies ! 



As the slow shadows of the pointed 

grass 
Mark the eternal periods, his pangs pass 
Slow, ever-moving, — making moments 

be 
As mine seem — each an immortality ! 

"That you had never seen me — never 

heard 
My voice, and more than all had ne'er 

endured 
The deep pollution of my loathed em- 
brace — 
That your eyes ne'er had lied love in my 

face — 
That, like some maniac monk, I had 

torn out 
The nerves of manhood by their bleeding 

root 
With mine own quivering fingers, so 

that ne'er 
Our hearts had for a moment mingled 

there 
To disunite in horror — these were not 
With thee, like some supprest and 

hideous thought 
Which flits athwart our musings, but can 

find 
No rest within a pure and gentle 

mind . . . 
Thou sealedst them with many a bare 

broad word 
And searedst my memory o'er them, — 

for I heard 
And can forget not . . . they were 

ministered 
One after one, those curses. Mix them 

Like self-destroying poisons in one 

cup. 
And they will make one blessing which 

thou ne'er 
Didst imprecate for, on me, — death. 

" It were 
A cruel punishment for one most cruel 
If such can love, to make that love the 

fuel 
Of the mind's hell; hate, scorn, remorse, 

despair : 
But me — whose heart a stranger's tear 

might wear 



256 



JULIAN AND MADDALO. 



As water-drops the sandy fountain- 
stone, 
Who loved and pitied all things, and 

could moan 
For woes which others hear not, and 

could see 
The absent with the glance of fantasy. 
And with the poor and trampled sit and 

weep, 
Following the captive to his dungeon 

deep; 
Me — who am as a nerve o'er which do 

creep 
The else unfelt oppressions of this earth, 
And was to thee the flame upon thy 

hearth, 
When all beside was cold — that thou on 

me 
Shouldst rain these plagues of blistering 

agony — 
Such curses are from lips once eloquent 
With love's too partial praise — let none 

relent 
Who intend deeds too dreadful for a 

name 
Henceforth, if an example for the same 
They seek . . . for thou on me lookedst 

so, and so — 
And didst speak thus . . . and thus . . . 

I live to show 
How much men bear and die not ! 

"Thou wilt tell. 
With the grimace of hate how horrible 
It was to meet my love when thine grew 

less; 
Thou wilt admire how I could e'er 

address 
Such features to love's work . . . this 

taunt, tho' true, 
(For indeed nature nor in form nor hue 
Bestowed on me her choicest workman- 
ship) 
Shall not be thy defence . . . for since 

thy lip 
Met mine first, years long past, since 

thine eye kindled 
With soft fire under mine, I have not 

dwindled 
Nor changed in mind or body, or in 

aught 
But as love changes what it loveth not 
After long years and many trials. 



" How vain 
Are words ! I thought never to speak 

again. 
Not even in secret, — not to my own 

heart — 
But from my lips the unwilling accents 

start. 
And from my pen the words flow as I 

write, 
Dazzling my eyes with scalding tears 

. . . my sight 
Is dim to see that charactered in vain 
On this unfeeling leaf which burns the 

brain 
And eats into it . . . blotting all things 

fair 
And wise and good which time had 

written there. 

*' Those who inflict must suffer, for 

they see 
The work of their own hearts and this 

must be 
Our chastisement or recompense — O 

child ! 
I would that thine were like to be more 

mild 
For both our wretched sakes . . . for 

thine the most 
Who feelest already all that thou hast 

lost 
Without the power to wish it thine 

again; 
And as slow years pass, a funereal train 
Each with the ghost of some lost hope 

or friend 
Following it like its shadow, wilt thou 

bend 
No thought on my dead memory? 

"Alas, love! 
Fear me not . . . against thee I would 

not move 
A finger in despite. Do I not live 
That thou mayst have less bitter cause to 

grieve? 
I give thee tears for scorn and love for 

hate; 
And that thy lot may be less desolate 
Than his on whom thou tramplest, I 

refrain 
From that sweet sleep which medicines 

all pain. 



JULIAN AND MADDALO. 



257 



' Then, when thou speakest of me, never 

say 
' He could forgive not. ' Here I cast away 
All human passions, all revenge, all 

pride; 
I think, speak, act no ill; I do but hide 
Under these words, like embers, every 

spark 
Of that which has consumed me — Quick 

and dark 
The grave is yawning ... as its roof 

shall cover 
My limbs with dust and worms under 

and over 
So let Oblivion hide this grief . . . the 

air 
Closes upon my accents, as despair 
Upon my heart — let death upon de- 
spair ! " 

He ceast, and overcome leant back 

awhile, 
Then rising, with a melancholy smile 
Went to a sofa, and lay down, and slept 
A heavy sleep, and in his dreams he 

wept 
And muttered some familiar name, and 

we 
Wept without shame in his society. 
I think I never was imprest so much; 
The man who were not, must have 

lackt a touch 
Of human nature . . . then we lingered 

not, 
Altho' our argument was quite forgot, 
But calling the attendants, went to dine 
At Maddalo's ; yet neither cheer nor 

wine 
Could give us spirits, for we talkt of 

him 
And nothing else, till daylight made 

stars dim; 
And we agreed his was some dreadful 

ill 
Wrought on him boldly, yet unspeakable, 
By a dear friend; some deadly change 

in love 
Of one vowed deeply which he dreamed 

not of; 
For whose sake he, it seemed, had fixt 

a blot 
Of falsehood on his mind which flourisht 

not 



But in the light of all-beholding truth. 
And having stampt this canker on his 

youth 
She had abandoned him — and how much 

more 
Might be his woe, we guessed not — he 

had store 
Of friends and fortune once, as we could 

guess 
From his nice habits and his gentleness; 
These were now lost ... it were a 

grief indeed 
If he had changed one unsustaining reed 
For all that such a man might else adorn. 
The colors of his mind seemed yet un- 
worn; 
For the wild language of his grief was 

high. 
Such as in measure were called poetry, 
And I remember one remark which then 
Maddalo made. He said: " Most 

wretched men 
Are cradled into poetry by wrong, 
They learn in suffering what they teach 

in song." 

If I had been an unconnected man 
I, from this moment, should have formed 

some plan 
Never to leave sweet Venice, — for to me 
It was delight to ride by the lone sea; 
And then, the town is silent — one may 

write 
Or read in gondolas by day or night, 
Having the little brazen lamp alight. 
Unseen, uninterrupted; books are there. 
Pictures, and casts from all those statues 

fair 
Which were twin-born with poetry, and 

all 
We seek in towns, with little to recall 
Regrets for the green country. I might 

sit 
In Maddalo's great palace, and his wit 
And subtle talk would cheer the winter 

night 
And make me know myself, and the 

firelight 
Would flash upon our faces, till the day 
Might dawn and make me wonder at my 

stay: 
But I had friends in London too : the chief 
Attraction here, was that I sought relief 



258 



JULIAN AND MADDALO. 



From the deep tenderness that maniac 

wrought 
Within me — 't was perhaps an idle 

thought — 
But I imagined that if day by day 
I watcht him, and but seldom went 

away, 
And studied all the beatings of his heart 
With zeal, as men study some stubborn 

art 
For their own good, and could by 

patience find 
An entrance to the caverns of his mind, 
I might reclaim him from this dark 

estate : 
In friendships I had been most for- 
tunate — 
Yet never saw I one whom I would call 
More willingly my friend; and this was 

all 
Accomplisht not; such dreams of base- 
less good 
Oft come and go in crowds or solitude 
And leave no trace — but what I now 

designed 
Made for long years impression on my 

mind. 
The following morning urged by my 

affairs 
I left bright Venice. 

After many years 
And many changes I returned; the name 
Of Venice, and its aspect, was the 

same; 
But Maddalo was travelling far away 
Among the mountains of Armenia. 
His dog was dead. His child had now 

become 
A woman; such as it has been my doom 
To meet with few, a wonder of this earth 
Where there is little of transcendent 

worth, 
Like one of Shakespeare's women. 

Kindly she. 
And with a manner beyond courtesy. 
Received her father's friend; and when 

I askt 
Of the lorn maniac, she her memory 

ta&kt 
And told, as she had heard, the mournful 

tale. 
" That the poor sufferer's health began 

to fail 



Two years from my departure, but that 

then 
The lady who had left him, came again. 
Her mien had been imperious, but she 

now 
Lookt meek — perhaps remorse had 

brought her low. 
Her coming made him better, and they 

stayed 
Together at my father's — for I played 
As I remember with the lady's shawl — 
I might be six years old — but after all 
She left him." ..." Why, her heart 

must have been tough : 
How did it end? " " And was not this 

enough .? 
They met — they parted" — "Child, is 

there no more? " 
" Something within that interval which 

bore 
The stamp of "cvhy they parted, hoiu they 

met : 
Yet if thine aged eyes disdain to wet 
Those wrinkled cheeks with youth's 

remembered tears. 
Ask me no more, but let the silent years 
Be closed and cered over their memory 
As yon mute marble where their corpses 

lie." 
I urged and questioned still, she told 

me how 
All happened — but the cold world shall 

not know. 

CANCELLED FRAGMENTS OF 
JULIAN AND MADDALO. 

" What think you the dead are ? " 

" Why, dust and clay. 
What should they be?" " 'T is the 

last hour of day. 
Look on the west, how beautiful it is 
Vaulted with radiant vapors ! The deep 

bliss 
Of that unutterable light has made 
The edges of that cloud fade 

Into a hue, like some harmonious thought. 
Wasting itself on that which it had 

wrought, 
Till it dies and 

between 
The light hues of the tender, pure, 

serene, 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 



259 



And infinite tranquillity of heaven. 
Ay, beautiful ! but when not. . . ." 

" Perhaps the only comfort which re- 
mains 
Is the unheeded clanking of my chains, 
The which I make, and call it melody." 



NOTE BY MRS. SHELLEY. 

From the Baths of Lucca, in 1818, 
Shelley visited Venice; and, circum- 
stances rendering it eligible that we 
should remain a few weeks in the neigh- 
borhood of that city, he accepted the 
offer of Lord Byron, who lent him the 
use of a villa he rented near Este; and 
he sent for his family from Lucca to 
join him. 

I Capuccini was a villa built on the 
site of a Capuchin convent, demolished 
when the French suppressed religious 
houses; it was situated on the very over- 
hanging brow of a low hill at the foot of 
a range of higher ones. The house was 
cheerful and pleasant; a vine-trellised 
walk, a pergola, as it is called in Italian, 
led from the hall-door to a summer-house 
at the end of the garden, which Shelley 
made his study, and in which he began 
the Prometheics ; and here also, as he 
inentions in a letter, he wrote Julian 
and Maddalo. A slight ravine, with a 
road in its depth, divided the garden 
from the hill, on which stood the ruins 
of the ancient castle of Este, whose dark 
massive wall gave forth an echo, and 
from whose ruined crevices owls and 
bats flitted forth at night, as the crescent 
moon sunk behind the black and heavy 
battlements. We looked from the gar- 
den over the wide plain of Lombardy, 
bounded to the west by the far Apen- 
nines, while to the east the horizon was 
lost in misty distance. After the pictur- 
esque but limited view of mountain, 
ravine, and chestnut-wood, at the Baths 
of Lucca, there was something infinitely 
gratifying to the eye in the wide range 
of prospect commanded by our new 
abode. 

Our first misfortune, of the kind from 



which we soon suffered even more se- 
verely, happened here. Our little girl, 
an infant in whose small features I fan- 
cied that I traced great resemblance to 
her father, showed symptoms of suffering 
from the heat of the climate. Teething 
increased her illness and danger. We 
were at Este, and when we became 
alarmed, hastened to Venice for the best 
advice. When we arrived at Fusina, we 
found that we had forgotten our passport, 
and the soldiers on duty attempted to 
prevent our crossing the laguna; but 
they could not resist Shelley's impetu- 
osity at such a moment. We had scarcely 
arrived at Venice before life fled from 
the little sufferer, and we returned to 
Este to weep her loss. 

After a few weeks spent in this retreat, 
which was interspersed by visits to Ven- 
ice, we proceeded southward. 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 
A LYRICAL DRAMA. 

IN FOUR ACTS. 

AUDISNH H^C AMPHIARAE, SUB TBRRAM 

ABDITE ? 

PREFACE. 

The Greek tragic writers, in selecting 
as their subject any portion of their 
national history or mythology, employed 
in their treatment of it a certain arbi- 
trary discretion. They by no means con- 
ceived themselves bound to adhere to the 
common interpretation or to imitate in 
story as in title their rivals and prede- 
cessors. Such a system would have 
amounted to a resignation of those claims 
to preference over their competitors 
which incited the composition. The 
Agamemnonian story was exhibited on 
the Athenian theatre with as many varia- 
tions as dramas. 

I have presumed to employ a similar 
license. The " Prometheus Unbound " 
of ^schylus supposed the reconciliation 
of Jupiter with his victim as the price of 



26o 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 



the disclosure of the danger threatened 
to his empire by the consummation of 
his marriage with Thetis. Thetis, accord- 
ing to this view of the subject, was given 
in marriage to Peleus, and Prometheus, 
by the permission of Jupiter, delivered 
from his captivity by Hercules. Had I 
framed my story on this model, I should 
have done no more than have attempted 
to restore the lost drama of .Eschylus; 
an ambition which, if my preference to 
this mode of treating the subject had" in- 
cited me to cherish, the recollection of 
the high comparison such an attempt 
would challenge might well abate. But, 
in truth, I was averse from a catastrophe 
so feeble as that of reconciling the Cham- 
pion with the Oppressor of mankind. 
The moral interest of the fable, which is 
so powerfully sustained by the sufferings 
and endurance of Prometheus, would be 
annihilated if we could conceive of him 
as unsaying his high language and quail- 
ing before his successful and perfidious 
adversary. The only imaginary being 
resembling in any degree Prometheus, is 
Satan; and Prometheus is, in my judg- 
ment, a more poetical character than 
Satan, because, in addition to courage, 
and majesty, and firm and patient oppo- 
sition to omnipotent force, he is suscep- 
tible of being described as exempt from 
the taints of ambition, envy, revenge, 
and a desire for personal aggrandize- 
ment, which, in the Hero of Paradise 
Lost, interfere with the interest. The 
character of Satan engenders in the mind 
a pernicious casuistry which leads us to 
weigh his faults with his wrongs, and to 
excuse the former because the latter 
exceed all measure. In the minds of 
those who consider that magnificent fic- 
tion with a religious feeling it engenders 
something worse. But Prometheus is, as 
it were, the type of the highest perfec- 
tion of moral and intellectual nature, 
impelled by the purest and the truest 
motives to the best and noblest ends. 

This Poem was chiefiy written upon 
the mountainous ruins of the Baths of 
Caracalla, among the flowery glades, 
and thickets of odoriferous blossoming 
trees, which are extended in ever wind- 



ing labyrinths upon its immense plat- 
forms and dizzy arches suspended in the 
air. The bright blue sky of Rome, and 
the effect of the vigorous awakening 
spring in that divinest climate, and the 
new life with which it drenches the 
spirits even to intoxication, were the in- 
spiration of this drama. 

The imagery which I have employed 
will be found, in many instances, to have 
been drawn from the operations of the 
human mind, or from those external ac- 
tions by which they are expressed. This 
is unusual in modern poetry, although 
Dante and Shakespeare are full of in- 
stances of the same kind: Dante indeed 
more than any other poet, and with 
greater success. But the Greek poets, as 
writers to whom no resource of awaken- 
ing the sympathy of their contemporaries 
was unknown, were in the habitual use 
of this power; and it is the study of their 
works (since a higher merit woula ob- 
ably be denied me) to which I am >/ill- 
ing that my readers should impute this 
singularity. 

One word is due in candor to the de- 
gree in which the study of contemporary 
writings may have tinged my composi- 
tion, for such has been a topic of censure 
with regard to poems far more popular, 
and indeed more deservedly popular, than 
mine. It is impossible that any one who 
inhabits the same age with such writers 
as those who stand in the foremost ranks 
of Our own, can conscientiously assure 
himself that his language and tone of 
thought may not have been modified by 
the study of the productions of those 
extraordinary intellects. It is true, that, 
not the spirit of their genius, but the 
forms in which it has manifested itself, 
are due less to the peculiarities of their 
own minds than to the peculiarity of the 
moral and intellectual condition of the 
minds among which they have been pro- 
duced. Thus a number of writers possess 
the form, whilst they want the spirit of 
those whom, it is alleged, they imitate; 
because the former is the endowment of 
the age in which they live, and the latter 
must be the uncommunicated lightning 
of their own mind. 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 



261 



The peculiar style of intense and com- 
prehensive imagery which distinguishes 
the modern literature of England, has 
not been, as a general power, the prod- 
uct of the imitation of any particular 
writer. The mass of capabilities remains 
at every period materially the same; the 
circumstances which awaken it to action 
perpetually change. If England were 
divided into forty republics, each equal 
in population and extent to Athens, there 
is no reason to suppose but that, under 
institutions not more perfect than those 
of Athens, each would produce philoso- 
phers and poets equal to those who (if 
we except Shakespeare) have never been 
surpassed. We owe the great writers of 
the golden age of our literature to that 
fervid awakening of the public mind 
which shook to dust the oldest and most 
oppressive form of the Christian religion. 
We owe Milton to the progress and de- 
velopment of the same spirit : the sacred 
Milton was, let it ever be remembered, 
a republican, and a bold inquirer into 
morals and religion. The great writers 
of our own age are, we have reason to 
suppose, the companions and forerunners 
of some unimagined change in our social 
condition or the opinions which cement 
it. The cloud of mind is discharging its 
collected lightning, and the equilibrium 
between institutions and opinions is now 
restoring, or is about to be restored. 

As to imitation, poetry is a mimetic 
art. It creates, but it creates by combi- 
nation and representation. Poetical ab- 
stractions are beautiful and new, not 
because the portions of which they are 
composed had no previous existence in 
the mind of man or in nature, but be- 
cause the whole produced by their com- 
bination has some intelligible and beauti- 
ful analogy with those sources of emo- 
tion and thought, and with the contem- 
porary condition of them : one great 
poet is a masterpiece of nature which 
another not only ought to study but must 
study. He might as wisely and as easily 
determine that his mind should no longer 
be the mirror of all that is lovely in the 
visible universe, as exclude from his con- 
templation the beautiful which exists in 



the writings of a great contemporary. 
The pretence of doing it would be a 
presumption in any but the greatest: the 
effect, even in him, would be strained, 
unnatural, and ineffectual. A poet is 
the combined product of such internal 
powers as modify the nature of others; 
and of such external influences as excite 
and sustain these powers; he is not one, 
but both. Every man's mind is, in this 
respect, modified by all the objects of 
nature and art ; by every word and every 
suggestion which he ever admitted to act 
upon his consciousness; it is the mirror 
upon which all forms are reflected, and 
in which they compose one form. Poets, 
not otherwise than philosophers, paint- 
ers, sculptors, and musicians, are, in one 
sense, the creators, and, in another, the 
creations, of their age. From this sub- 
jection the loftiest do not escape. There 
is a similarity between Homer and Hes- 
iod, between ^schylus and Euripides, 
between Virgil and Horace, between 
Dante and Petrarch, between Shake- 
speare and Fletcher, between Dryden 
and Pope; each has a generic resem- 
blance under which their specific distinc- 
tions are arranged. If this similarity be 
the result of imitation, I am willing to 
confess that I have imitated. 

Let this opportunity be conceded to 
me of acknowledging that I have, what 
a Scotch philosopher characteristically 
terms, "a passion for reforming the 
world:" what passion incited him to 
write and publish his book, he omits to 
explain. For my part I had rather be 
damned with Plato and Lord Bacon, 
than go to Heaven with Paley and Mal- 
thus. But it is a mistake to suppose 
that I dedicate my poetical compositions 
solely to the direct enforcement of re- 
form, or that I consider them in any 
degree as containing a reasoned system 
on the theory of human life. Didactic 
poetry is my abhorrence; nothing can be 
equally well expressed in prose that is 
not tedious and supererogatory in verse. 
My purpose has hitherto been simply to 
familiarize the highly refined imagination 
of the more select classes of poetical 
readers with beautiful idealisms of moral 



262 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 



excellence; aware that until the mind 
can love, and admire, and trust, and 
hope, and endure, reasoned principles of 
moral conduct are seeds cast upon the 
highway of life which the unconscious 
passenger tramples into dust, although 
they would bear the harvest of his hap- 
piness. Should I live to accomplish 
what I purpose, that is, produce a sys- 
tematical history of what appear to me 
to be the genuine elements of human 
society, let not the advocates of injustice 
and superstition flatter themselves that I 
should take ^schylus rather than Plato 
as my model. 

The having spoken of myself with un- 
affected freedom will need little apology 
with the candid; and let the uncandid 
consider that they injure me less than 
their own hearts and minds by misrepre- 
sentation. Whatever talents a person 
may possess to amuse and instruct others, 
be they ever so inconsiderable, he is yet 
bound to exert them : if his attempt be 
ineffectual, let the punishment of an un- 
accomplished purpose have been suffi- 
cient; let none trouble themselves to 
heap the dust of oblivion upon his ef- 
forts; the pile they raise will betray his 
grave which might otherwise have been 
unknown. 

DRAMATIS FERSONM. 



Prometheus. 




Mercury. 


Demogorgon. 




Hercules. 


Jupiter. 




Asia \ 


The Earth. 




Panthea > Oceanides 


Ocean. 




lONE 


Apollo. 






The Phantasm of 


Jupiter. 


The Spirit of 


the 


Earth. 


The Spirit of 


THE 


Moon. 


Spirits of the 


Hours. 


Spirits. Echoes. 


Fauns. Furies. 



ACT I. 

Scene. — A Ravine of Icy Rocks in 
THE Indian Caucasus. 

Prometheus is discovered hound to the 
Precipice. Panthea and lONE are 
seated at his feet. Time, ni^ht. 
During the Scene, morning sloxvly 
breaks. 



Prometheus. Monarch of Gods and 
Dcemons, and all Spirits 
But One, who throng those bright and 
rolling worlds 

Which Thou and I alone of living things 
Behold with sleepless eyes ! regard this 

Earth 
Made multitudinous with thy slaves, 
whom thou 

Requitest for knee-worship, prayer, and 
praise. 

And toil, and hecatombs of broken 
hearts. 

With fear and self-contempt and barren 
hope. 

Whilst me, who am thy foe, eyeless in 
hate. 

Hast thou made reign and triumph, to thy 
scorn. 

O'er mine own misery and thy vain re- 
venge. 

Three thousand years of sleep-unshel- 
tered hours. 

And moments aye divided by keen pangs 

Till they seemed years, torture and soli- 
tude. 

Scorn and despair, — these are mine 
empire: — 

More glorious far than that which thou 
surveyest 

From thine unenvied throne, O Mighty 
God! 

Almighty, had I deigned to share the 
shame 

Of thine ill tyranny, and hung not here 

Nailed to this wall of eagle-baifling 
mountain. 

Black, wintry, dead, unmeasured; with- 
out herb. 

Insect, or beast, or shape or sound of life. 

Ah me ! alas, pain, pain ever, for ever ! 

No change, no pause, no hope ! Yet I 

endure. 
I ask the Earth, have not the mountains 

felt? 
I ask yon Heaven, the all-beholding Sun, 
Has it not seen? The Sea, in storm or 

calm. 
Heaven's ever-changing Shadow, spread 

below, 
Have its deaf waves not heard my agony? 
Ah me ! alas, pain, pain ever, for ever ! 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 



J63 



The crawling glaciers pierce me with the 

spears 
Of their moon-freezing crystals; the 

bright chains 
Eat with their burning cold into my 

bones. 
Heaven's winged hound, polluting from 

thy lips 
His beak in poison not his own, tears up 
My heart; and shapeless sights come 

wandering by, 
The ghastly people of the realm of 

dream, 
Mocking me : and the Earthquake-fiends 

are charged 
To wrench the rivets from my quivering 

wounds 
When the rocks split and close again 

behind: 
While from their loud abysses howling 

throng 
The genii of the storm, urging the rage 
Of whirlwind, and afflict me with keen 

hail. 
And yet to me welcome is day and 

night. 
Whether one breaks the hoar frost of 

the morn, 
Or starry, dim, and slow, the other climbs 
The leaden-colored east; for then they 

lead 
The wingless, crawling hours, one among 

whom 
— As some dark Priest hales the reluc- 
tant victim — 
Shall drag thee, cruel King, to kiss the 

blood 
From these pale feet, which then might 

trample thee 
If they disdained not such a prostrate 

slave. 
Disdain ! Ah no ! I pity thee. What 

ruin 
Will hunt thee undefended thro' the wide 

Heaven ! 
How will thy soul, cloven to its depth 

with terror. 
Gape like a hell within ! I speak in 

grief, 
Not exultation, for I hate no more, 
As then ere misery made me wise. The 

curse 
Once breathed on thee I would recal. 



Ye Mountains, 
Whose many-voiced Echoes, thro' the 

mist 
Of cataracts, flung the thunder of that 

spell ! 
Ye icy Springs, stagnant with wrinkling 

frost, 
Which vibrated to hear me, and then 

crept 
Shuddering thro' India! Thou serenest 

Air, 
Thro' which the Sun walks burning with- 
out beams ! 
And ye swift Whirlwinds, who on poised 

wings 
Hung mute and moveless o'er yon husht 

abyss, 
As thunder, louder than your own, made 

rock 
The orbed world ! If then my words had 

power, 
Tho' I am changed so that aught evil 

wish 
Is dead within; altho' no memory be 
Of what is hate, let them not lose it now ! 
What was that curse? for ye all heard 
me speak. 
First ]^oice (from the Motititains). 
Thrice three hundred thousand years 
O'er the Earthquake's couch we 
stood : 
Oft, as men convulsed with fears. 
We trembled in our multitude. 
St'iond Voice (from the Spri}7gs). 
Thunderbolts had parcht our water, 
We had been stained with bitter 
blood. 
And had run mute, mid shrieks of 
slaughter. 
Thro' a city and a solitude. 
Third Voice (from the Air). 
I had clothed, since Earth uprose, 

Its wastes in colors not their own, 
And oft had my serene repose 

Been cloven by many a rending 
groan. 
Fourth Voice (from the JVhirkvtnds). 
We had soared beneath these moun- 
tains 
Unresting ages; nor had thunder. 
Nor yon volcano's flaming fountains, 
Nor any power' above or under 
Ever made us mute with wonder. 



264 



PR OME THE US UNB UND. 



First Voice. 
But never bowed our snowy crest 
As at the voice of thine unrest. 

Second Voice. 
Never such a sound before 
To the Indian waves we bore. 
A pilot asleep on the howling sea 
Leapt up from the deck in agony, 
And heard, and cried, " Ah, woe is me ! " 
And died as mad as the wild waves be. 
Third Voice. 
By such dread words from Earth to 

Heaven 
My still realm was never riven : 
When its wound was closed, there 

stood 
Darkness o'er the day like blood. 

Fourth Voice. 
And we shrank back: for dreams of 

ruin 
To frozen caves our flight pursuing 
Made us keep silence — thus — and 

thus — 
Tho' silence is a hell to us. 
The Earth. The tongueless Caverns 
of the craggy hills 
Cried, "Misery!" then; the hollow 

Heaven replied, 
"Misery!" And the Ocean's purple 

waves. 
Climbing the land, howled to the lashing 

winds, 
And the pale nations heard it, " Misery !" 
Prometheus. I hear a sound of voices : 
not the voice 
Which I gave forth. Mother, thy sons 

and thou 
Scorn him, without whose all-enduring 

will 
Beneath the fierce omnipotence of Jove, 
Both they and thou had vanished, like 

thin mist 
Unrolled on the morning wind. Know 

ye not me. 
The Titan? He who made his agony 
The barrier to your else all-conquering 

foe? 
Oh, rock-embosomed lawns, and snow- 
fed streams, 
Now seen athwart frore vapors, deep 

below. 
Thro' whose o'ershadowing woods I 
wandered once 



With Asia, drinking life from her loved 

eyes; \ 

Why scorns the spirit which informs ye, | 

now 
To commune with me? me alone, who 

checkt, i 

As one who checks a fiend-drawn I 

charioteer, i 

The falsehood and the force of him who ! 

reigns ! 

Supreme, and with the groans of pining ; 

slaves \ 

Fills your dim glens and liquid wilder- j 

nesses : 
Why answer ye not, still? Brethren ! 
The Earth. They dare not. 

Prometheus. Who dares? for I would 
hear that curse again. 
Ha, what an awful whisper rises up ! 
'T is scarce like sound: it tingles thro' 

the frame 
As lightning tingles, hovering ere it 

strike. 
Speak, Spirit! from thine inorganic 

voice 
I only know that thou art moving 

near 
And love. How curst I him? 

The Earth. How canst thou hear 

Who knowest not the language of the 
dead? 
Prometheus. Thou art a living spirit : 

speak as they. 
The Earth. I dare not speak like 
life, lest Heaven's fell King 
Should hear, and link me to some wheel 

of pain 
More torturing than the one whereon i 

roll. 
Subtle thou art and good, and tho' the 

Gods 
Hear not this voice, yet thou art more 

than God 
Being wise and kind: earnestly hearken 
now. 
Prometheus. Obscurely thro' my brain, 
like shadows dim. 
Sweep awful thoughts, rapid and thick. 

I feel 
Faint, like one mingled in entwining 

love ; 
Yet 't is not pleasure. 

The Earth. No, thou canst not hear : 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 



265 



Thou art immortal, and this tongue is 

known 
Only to those who die. 

Prometheus. And what art thou, 
O melancholy Voice? 

77ie Earth. I am the Earth, 
Thy mother; she within whose stony 

veins. 
To the last fibre of the loftiest tree 
Whose thin leaves trembled in the frozen 

air, 
Joy ran, as blood within a living frame. 
When thou didst from her bosom, like a 

cloud 
Of glory, arise, a spirit of keen joy ! 
And at thy voice her pining sons uplifted 
Their prostrate brows from the polluting 

dust. 
And our almighty Tyrant with fierce 

dread 
Grew pale, until his thunder chained thee 

here. 
Then, see those million worlds which 

burn and roll 
Around us: their inhabitants beheld 
My sphered light wane in wide Heaven; 

the sea 
Was lifted by strange tempest, and new 

fire 
From earthquake-rifted mountains of 

bright snow 
Shook its portentous hair beneath 

Heaven's frown; 
Lightning and Inundation vext the 

plains; 
Blue thistles bloomed in cities; foodless 

toads 
Within voluptuous chambers panting 

crawled: 
When Plague had fallen on man, and 

beast, and worm, 
'And Famine; and black blight on herb 

and tree; 
' And in the corn, and vines, and meadow- 
grass, 
'Teemed ineradicable poisonous weeds 
I Draining their growth, for my wan breast 

was dry 
^ With grief; and the thin air, my breath, 

was stained 
With the contagion of a mother's hate 
Breathed on her child's destroyer; aye, 

I heard 
ll 



Thy curse, the which, if thou remember 

est not. 
Yet my innumerable seas and streams, 
Mountains, and caves, and winds, and 

yon wide air. 
And the inarticulate people of the dead, 
Preserve, a treasured spell. We meditate 
In secret joy and hope those dreadful 

words 
But dare not speak them. 

Prometheus. Venerable mother ! 
All else who live and suffer take from 

thee 
Some comfort; flowers, and fruits, and 

happy sounds. 
And love, though fleeting; these may not 

be mine. 
But mine own words, I pray, deny me 
not. 
The Earth. They shall be told. Ere 
Babylon was dust. 
The Magus Zoroaster, my dead child, 
Met his own image walking in the garden. 
That apparition, sole of men, he saw. 
For know there are two worlds of life 

and death : 
One that which thou beholdest; but the 

other 
Is underneath the grave, where do in- 
habit 
The shadows of all forms that think and 

live 
Till death unite them and they part no 

more; 
Dreams and the light imaginings of men, 
And all that faith creates or love desires. 
Terrible, strange, sublime and beauteous 

shapes. 
There thou art, and dost hang, a writh- 
ing shade, 
Mid whirlwind-peopled mountains; all 

the gods 
Are there, and all the powers of name- 
less worlds, 
Vast, sceptred phantoms; heroes, men, 

and beasts; 
And Demogorgon, a tremendous gloom; 
And he, the supreme Tyrant, on his 

throne 
Of burning gold. Son, one of these 

shall utter 
The curse which all remember. Call at 
will 



266 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 



Thine own ghost, or the ghost of Jupiter, 
Hades or Typhon, or what mightier 

Gods 
From all-proHfic Evil, since thy ruin 
Have sprung, and trampled on my pros- 
trate sons. 
Ask, and they must reply : so the revenge 
Of the Supreme may sweep thro' vacant 

shades, 
As rainy wind thro' the abandoned gate 
Of a fallen palace. 

Prometheus. Mother, let not aught 
Of that which may be evil, pass again 
My lips, or those of aught resembling 

me. 
Phantasm of Jupiter, arise, appear ! 
lone. 
My wings are folded o'er mine ears: 

My wings are crossed o'er mine eyes : 
Yet thro' their silver shade appears. 

And thro' their lulling plumes arise, 
A Shape, a throng of sounds; 

May it be no ill to thee 
O thou of many wounds ! 
Near whom, for our sweet sister's sake, 
Ever thus we watch and wake. 
Panthea. 
The sound is of whirlwind underground, 
Earthquake, and fire, and mountains 
cloven; 
The shape is awful like the sound. 
Clothed in dark purple, star-in- 
woven. 
A sceptre of pale gold 

To stay steps proud, o'er the slow 
cloud 
His veined hand doth hold. 
Cruel he looks, but calm and strong. 
Like one who does, not suffers wrong. 
Phantasm of Jicpiter. Why have the 
secret powers of this strange world 
Driven me, a frail and empty phantom, 

hither 
On direst storms? What unaccustomed 

sounds 
Are hovering on my lips, unlike the 

voice 
With which our pallid race hold ghastly 

talk 
In darkness? And, proud sufferer, who 
art thou? 
Prometheus. Tremendous Image, as 
thou art must be 



He whom thou shadowest forth. I am 

his foe. 
The Titan. Speak the words which 7 

would hear, 
Although no thought inform thine empty 
voice. 
The Earth. Listen ! And tho' your 
echoes must be mute. 
Gray mountains, and old woods, and 

haunted springs. 
Prophetic caves, and isle-surrounding 

streams. 
Rejoice to hear what yet ye cannot 
speak. 
Phantasm. A spirit seizes me and 
speaks within : 
It tears me as fire tears a thunder- 
cloud. 
Panthea. See, how he lifts his mighty 
looks, the Heaven 
Darkens above. 

lone. He speaks ! O shelter me ! 

Pro7netheus. I see the curse on ges- 
tures proud and cold. 
And looks of firm defiance, and calm 

hate, 
And such despair as mocks itself with , 
smiles, j 

Written as on a scroll : yet speak : Oh, J 
speak ! ^ 

Phantasm. 
Fiend, I defy thee ! with a calm, fixed 
mind. 
All that thou canst inflict I bid thee 
do; 
Foul Tyrant both of Gods and 
Human-kind, 
One only being shalt thou not 
subdue. 
Rain then thy plagues upon me 

here, 
Ghastly disease, and frenzying fear; 
And let alternate frost and fire 
Eat into me, and be thine ire 
Lightning, and cutting hail, and legioned 

forms 
Of furies, driving by upon the wounding 

storms. , 

Ay, do thy worst ! Thou art cm- ^ 
nipotent. 
O'er all things but thyself I gave 
thee power, 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 



267 



And my own will. Be thy swift 
mischiefs sent 
To blast mankind, from yon 
ethereal tower. 
Let thy malignant spirit move 
In darkness over those I love : 
On me and mine I imprecate 
The utmost torture of thy hate; 
\nd thus devote to sleepless agony, 
rhis undeclining head while thou must 
reign on high. 

But thou, who art the God and Lord: 
O, thou. 
Who fiUest with thy soul this world 
of woe, 
To whom all things of Earth and 
Heaven do bow 
In fear and worship : all-prevail- 
ing foe ! 
I curse thee ! let a sufferer's curse 
Clasp thee, his torturer, like remorse; 
Till thine Infinity shall be 
A robe of envenomed agony; 
Vnd thine Omnipotence a crown of 

pain, 
ro cling like burning gold round thy 
dissolving brain. 

Heap on thy soul, by virtue of this 
Curse, 
111 deeds, then be thou damned, 
beholding good; 
Both infinite as is the universe. 

And thou, and thy self-torturing 
solitude. 
An awful image of calm power 
Tho' now thou sittest, let the hour 
Come, when thou must appear to be 
That whicli thou art internally. 
Vnd after many a false and fruitless 

crime 
Jcorn track thy lagging fall thro' bound- 
less space and time. 

Prometheus. Were these my words, 

O, Parent? 
The Earth. They were thine. 

Prometheus. It doth repent me : 

words are quick and vain; 
Grief for awhile is blind, and so was 

mine. 
I wish no living thing to suffer pain. 



The Earth. 
Misery, Oh misery to me. 
That Jove at length should vanquish 

thee. 
Wail, howl aloud. Land and Sea, 
The Earth's rent heart shall answer 
ye. 
Howl, Spirits of the living and the dead. 
Your refuge, your defence lies fallen and 
vanquished. 

First Echo. 
Lies fallen and vanquished ! 
Second Echo. 

Fallen and vanquished ! 
lone. 
Fear not : 't is but some passing spasm, 

The Titan is unvanquisht still. 
But see, where thro' the azure chasm 

Of yon forkt and snowy hill 
Trampling the slant winds on high 
With golden-sandalled feet, that 
glow 
Under plumes of purple dye, 
Like rose-ensanguined ivory, 

A Shape comes now. 
Stretching on high from his right hand 
A serpent-cinctured wand. 
Panthea. 'T is Jove's world-wander- 
ing herald. Mercury. 
lone. 
And who are those with hydra tresses 
And iron wings that climb the wind, 
Whom the frowning God represses 
Like vapors steaming up behind, 
Clanging loud, an endless crowd — 
Panthea. 
These are Jove's tempest-walking hounds, 
Whom he gluts with groans and blood. 
When charioted on sulphurous cloud 
He bursts Heaven's bounds. 
lone. 
Are they now led, from the thin dead 
On new pangs to be fed ? 
Panthea. 
The Titan looks as ever, firm, not proud. 
First Fury. Ha ! I scent life ! 
Second Fury. Let me but look into 

his eyes ! 
Third Fury. The hope of torturing 
him smells like a heap 
Of corpses, to a death-bird after battle. 
First Fury. Barest thou delay, O 
Herald ! take cheer, Hounds 



268 



PR OME THE US UNB O UND. 



Of Hell : what if the Son of Maia soon 
Should make us food and sport — who 

can please long 
The Omnipotent? 

Mercury. Back to your towers of 

iron, 
And gnash, beside the streams of fire 

and wail, 
Your foodless teeth. Geryon, arise ! 

and Gorgon, 
Chimsera, and thou Sphinx, subtlest of 

fiends 
Who ministered to Thebes Heaven's 

poisoned wine. 
Unnatural love, and more unnatural hate : 
These shall perform your task. 

First Fury. Oh, mercy ! mercy ! 

We die with our desire : drive us not 

back ! 
Mercury. Crouch then in silence. 
Awful Sufferer 
To thee unwilling, most unwillingly 
I come, by the great Father's will driven 

down. 
To execute a doom of new revenge. 
Alas ! I pity thee, and hate myself 
That I can do no more : aye from thy 

sight 
Returning, for a season, Heaven seems 

Hell, 
So thy worn form pursues me night and 

day, 
Smiling, .reproach. Wise art thou, firm 

and good. 
But vainly wouldst stand forth alone in 

strife 
Against the Omnipotent; as yon clear 

lamps 
That measure and divide the weary years 
From which there is no refuge, long 

have taught 
And long must teach. Even now thy 

Torturer arms 
With the strange might of unimagined 

pains 
The powers who scheme slow agonies in 

Hell, 
And my commission is to lead them 

here. 
Or what more subtle, foul, or savage 

fiends 
People the abyss, and leave them to their 

task. 



Be it not so ! there is a secret known 
To thee, and to none else of living 

things. 
Which may transfer the sceptre of wide 

Heaven, 
The fear of which perplexes the Supreme : 
Clothe it in words, and bid it clasp his 

throne 
In intercession; bend thy soul in prayer. 
And like a suppliant in some gorgeous 

fane. 
Let the will kneel within thy haughty 

heart: 
For benefits and meek submission tame 
The fiercest and the mightiest. 

Prometheus. Evil minds 

Change good to their own nature. I 

gave all 
He has ; and in return he chains me 

here 
Years, ages, night and day : whether the 

Sun 
Split my parched skin, or in the moony 

night 
The crystal-winged snow cling round my 

hair: 
Whilst my beloved race is trampled down 
By his thought-executing ministers. 
Such is the tyrant's recompense: 'tis 

just: 1 

He who is evil can receive no good; 
And for a world bestowed, or a friend 

lost. 
He can feel hate, fear, shame; not grat- 
itude : 
He but requites me for his own mis- 
deed. 
Kindness to such is keen reproach, which 

breaks 
With bitter stings the light sleep of Re- 
venge. 
Submission, thou dost know I cannot 

try : 
For what submission but that fatal word, 
The death-seal of mankind's captivity. 
Like the Sicilian's hair-suspended sword. 
Which trembles o'er his crown, would 

he accept ,^ 
Or could I yield? Which yet I will not 

yield. 
Let others flatter Crime, where it sits 

throned 
In brief Omnipotence: secure are they: 



PR OME THE US UNB O UND. 



269 



For Justice, when triumphant, will weep 

down 
Pity, not punishment, on her own 

wrongs, 
Too much avenged by those who err. 

I wait, 
Enduring thus, the retributive hour 
Which since we spake is even nearer now. 
But hark, the hell-hounds clamor: fear 

delay \ 
Behold ! Heaven lowers under thy 

Father's frown. 
Mercury. Oh, that we might be 

spared : I to inflict 
And thou to suffer ! Once more answer 

me : 
Thou knowest not the period of Jove's 

power? 
ProtnetJieus. I know but this, that it 

must come. 
Alerctiry. Alas ! 

Thou canst not count thy years to come 

of pain? 
Provielkeus. They last while Jove 

must reign: nor more, nor less 
Do I desire or fear. 

Mercury. Yet pause, and plunge 
Into Eternity, where recorded time. 
Even all that we imagine, age on age, 
Seems but a point, and the reluctant mind 
Flags wearily in its unending tiight, 
Till it sink, dizzy, blind, lost, shelterless; 
Perchance it has not numbered the slow 

years 
Which thou must spend in torture, unre- 

prieved? 
Prometheus. Perchance no thought 

can count them, yet they pass. 
Mercury. If thou might'st dwell 

among the Gods the while 
Lapt in voluptuous joy? 

Prometheus. I would not quit 

This bleak ravine, these unrepentant 

pains. 
Mercury. Alas! I wonder at, yet 

pity thee. 
Prometheus. Pity the self-despising 

slaves of Heaven, 
Not me, within whose mind sits peace 

serene. 
As light in the sun, throned: how vain 

is talk ! 
Call up the fiends. 



lone. O, sister, look ! White fire 

Has cloven to the roots yon huge snow- 
loaded cedar; 

How fearfully God's thunder howls be- 
hind ! 
ISIercury. I must obey his words and 
thine : alas ! 

Most heavily remorse hangs at my heart ! 
Panthea. See where the child of 
Heaven, with winged feet, 

Runs down the slanted sunlight of the 
dawn. 
lone. Dear sister, close thy plumes 
over thine eyes 

Lest thou behold and die : they come : 
they come 

Blackening the birth of day with count- 
less wings, 

And hollow underneath, like death. 
F^rst Fury. Prometheus ! 

Second Fury. Immortal Titan ! 
Third Fury. Champion of 

Heaven's slaves ! 
Prometheus. He whom some dread- 
ful voice invokes is here, 

Prometheus, the chained Titan. Horri- 
ble forms. 

What and who are ye? Never yet there 
came 

Phantasms so foul thro' monster-teeming 
Hell 

From the all-miscreative brain of Jove; 

Whilst I behold such execrable shapes, 

Methinks I grow like what I contem- 
plate. 

And laugh and stare in loathsome sym- 
pathy. 
First Fury. W^e are the ministers of 
pain, and fear. 

And disappointment, and mistrust, and 
hate. 

And clinging crime; and as lean dogs 
pursue 

Thro' wood and lake some struck and 
sobbing fawn, 

W'e track all things that weep, and bleed, 
and live. 

When the great King betrays them to 
our will. 
Prometheus. Oh ! many fearful natures 
in one name, 

I know ye; and these lakes and echoes 
know 



270 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 



The darkness and the clangor of your 

wings. 
But why more hideous than your loathed 

selves 
Gather ye up in legions from the 

deep? 
Second Fury. We knew not that : 

Sisters, rejoice, rejoice ! 
Prometheus. Can aught exult in its 

deformity? 
Second Fury. The beauty of delight 

makes lovers glad, 
Gazing on one another : so are we. 
As from the rose which the pale priestess 

kneels 
To gather for her festal crown of flowers 
The aerial crimson falls, flushing her 

cheek, 
So from our victim's destined agony 
The shade which is our form invests us 

round, 
Else we are shapeless as our mother 

Night. 
Prometheus. I laugh your power, and 

his who sent you here. 
To lowest scorn. Pour forth the cup of 

pain. 
First Fury. Thou thinkest we will 

rend thee bone from bone, 
And nerve from nerve, working like fire 

within? 
Prometheus. Pain is my element, as 

hate is thine; 
Ye rend me now: I care not. 

Second Fury. Dost imagine 

We will but laugh into thy lidless 

eyes? 
Prometheus. I weigh not what ye do, 

but what ye suffer, 
Being evil. Cruel was the power which 

called 
You, or aught else so wretched, into 

light. 
Third Fury. Thou think'st we will 

live thro' thee, one by one, 
Like animal life, and tho' we can obscure 

not 
The soul which burns within, that we will 

dwell 
Beside it, like a vain loud multitude 
Vexing the self-content of wisest men : 
That we will be dread thought beneath 

thy brain, 



And foul desire round thine astonisht 

heart, 
And blood within thy labyrinthine veins 
Crawling like agony. 

ProDietheus. Why, ye are thus now; 
Yet am I king over myself, and rule 
The torturing and conflicting throngs 

within. 
As Jove rules you when Hell grows 
mutinous. 

Chorus of Furies. 
From the ends of the earth, from the 
ends of the earth, 
Where the night has its grave and the 
morning its birth, 
Come, come, come ! 
Oh, ye who shake hills with the scream 

of your mirth. 
When cities sink howling in ruin; and 

Who with wingless footsteps trample the 

sea. 
And close upon Shipwreck and Famine's 

track. 
Sit chattering with joy on the foodless 
wreck; 

Come, come, come ! 
Leave the bed, low, cold, and red, 
Strewed beneath a nation dead; 
Leave the hatred, as in ashes 

Fire is left for future burning: 
It will burst in bloodier flashes 

When ye stir it, soon returning: 
Leave the self-contempt implanted 
In young spirits, sense-enchanted, 

Misery's yet unkindled fuel : 
Leave Hell's secrets half unchanted 

To the maniac dreamer; cruel 
More than ye can be with hate 
Is he with fear. 

Come, come, come ! 
W^e are steaming up from Hell's wide gate 
And we burden the blast of the 

atmosphere, 
But vainly we toil till ye come here. 
lone. Sister, I hear the thunder of 

new wings. 
Panthea. These solid mountains 
quiver with the sound 
Even as the tremulous air : their shadows { 
make i 

The space within my plumes more black 
than night. 



PR OME THE US UNB O UND. 



271 



First Fnry. 
Your call was as a winged car 
Driven on whirlwinds fast and far; 
It rapt us from red gulfs of war. 

Second Fury. 
From wide cities, famine-wasted; 

Third Fury. 
Groans half heard, and blood untasted; 

Fourth Fury. 
Kingly conclaves stern and cold, 
Where blood with gold is bought and 
sold; 

Fifth Fury. 
From the furnace, white and hot, 
In which — 

A Fury. 
Speak not : whisper not : 
I know all that ye would tell, 
But to speak might break the spell 
Which must bend the Invincible, 

The stern of thought; 
He yet defies the deepest power of Hell. 

Ftiry. 
Tear the veil ! 

Another Fury. 
It is torn. 

Chorus. 
The pale stars of the morn 
Shine on a misery, dire to be borne. 
Dost thou faint, mighty Titan? We 

laugh thee to scorn. 
Dost thou boast the clear knowledge 

thou waken'dst for man? 
Then was kindled within him a thirst 

which outran 
Those perishing waters; a thirst of fierce 

fever, 
Hope, love, doubt, desire, which con- 
sume him for ever. 
One came forth of gentle worth 
Smiling on the sanguine earth; 
His words outlived him, like swift 
poison 
Withering up truth, peace, and pity. 
Look ! where round the wide horizon 

Many a million-peopled city 
Vomits smoke in the bright air. 
Mark that outcry of despair ! 
'T is his mild and gentle ghost 

Wailing for the faith he kindled: 
Look again, the flames almost 

To a glow-worm's lamp have 
dwindled : 



The survivors round the embers 
Gather in dread. 
Joy, joy, joy ! 
Past ages crowd on thee, but each one 

remembers, 
And the future is dark, and the present 

is spread 
Like a pillow of thorns for thy slumber- 
less head. 

SeJ)iichorus I. 
Drops of bloody agony flow 
From his white and quivering brow. 
Grant a little respite now : 
See a disenchanted nation 
Springs like day from desolation; 
To Truth its state is dedicate. 
And Freedom leads it forth, her mate; 
A legioned ban of linked brothers 
Whom Love calls children — 
Semichorus II. 

'T is another's: 
See how kindred murder kin: 
'T is the vintage-time for death and sin : 
Blood, like new wine, bubbles within : 
Till Despair smothers 
The struggling world, which slaves and 
tyrants win. 
\_All the Furies vanish, except one. 
lone. Hark, sister! what a low yet 
dreadful groan. 
Quite unsupprest is tearing up the heart 
Of the good Titan, as storms tear the 

deep, 
And beasts hear the sea moan in inland 

caves. 
Darest thou observe how the fiends tor- 
ture him? 
Panthea. Alas ! I looked forth twice, 

but will no more. 
lone. What didst thou see? 
Panthea. A woful sight : a youth 
With patient looks nailed to a crucifix. 
Io)ie. What next ? 

Pa7ithea. The heaven around, the 
earth below 
Was peopled with thick shapes of human 

death. 
All horrible, and wrought by human 

hands, 
And some appeared the work of human 

hearts, 
For men were slowly killed by frowns 
and smiles: 



272 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 



And other sights too foul to speak and 

live 
Were wandering by. Let us not tempt 

worse fear 
By looking forth : those groans are grief 

enough. 
Fury. Behold an emblem : those who 

do endure 
Deep wrongs for man, and scorn, and 

chains, but heap 
Thousand-fold torment on themselves and 

him. 
Prometheus. Remit the anguish of 

that lighted stare; 
Close those wan lips; let that thorn- 
wounded brow 
Stream not with blood; it mingles with 

thy tears ! 
Fix, fix those tortured orbs in peace and 

death, 
So thy sick throes shake not that crucifix, 
So those pale fingers play not with thy 

gore. 
O, horrible ! thy name I will not speak. 
It hath become a curse. I see, I see 
The wise, the mild, the lofty, and the 

just. 
Whom thy slaves hate for being like to 

thee, 
Some hunted by foul lies from their 

heart's home. 
An early-chosen, late-lamented home; 
As hooded ounces cling to the driven 

hind; 
Some linkt to corpses in unwholesome 

cells: 
Some — Hear I not the multitude laugh 

loud? — 
Impaled in lingering fire : and mighty 

realms 
Float by my feet, like sea-uprooted isles. 
Whose sons are kneaded down in com- 
mon blood 
By the red light of their own burning 

homes. 
Fury. Blood thou canst see, and 

fire; and canst hear groans; 
Worse things, unheard, unseen, remain 

behind. 
Prometheus. Worse? 
Fury. In each human heart terror 

survives 
The ruin it has gorged : the loftiest fear 



All that they would disdain to think 

were true : 
Hypocrisy and custom make their minds 
The fanes of many a worship, now out- 
worn. 
They dare not devise good for man's 

estate, 
And yet they know not that they do not 

dare. 
The good want power, but to weep 

barren tears. 
The powerful goodness want : worse 

need for them. 
The wise want love; and those who 

love want wisdom ; 
And all best things are thus confused to 

ill. 
Many are strong and rich, and would be 

But live among their suffering fellow- 
men 
As if none felt: they know not what 

they do. 
Prometheus. Thy words are like a 

cloud of winged snakes; 
And yet I pity those they torture not. 
Fury. Thou pitiest them? I speak 

no more ! [ Vanishes. 

Pro/netheus. Ah woe ! 

Ah woe ! Alas ! pain, pain ever, for 

ever 5 
I close my tearless eyes, but see more 

clear 
Thy works within my woe-illumed mind. 
Thou subtle tyrant ! Peace is in the 

grave. 
The grave hides all things beautiful and 

good: 
I am a God and cannot find it there. 
Nor would I seek it: for, tho' dread 

revenge. 
This is defeat, fierce king, not victory. 
The sights with which thou torturest 

gird my soul 
With new endurance, till the hour arrives 
When they shall be no types of things 

which are. 
Panthea. Alas! what sawest thou? 
PrometJieus. There are two woes : 

To speak, and to behold; thou spare 

me one. 
Names are there, Nature's sacred watch- 
words, they 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 



273 



Were borne aloft in bright emblazonry; 
The nations thronged around, and cried 

aloud, 
As with one voice, Truth, liberty, and 

love i 
Suddenly fierce confusion fell from 

heaven 
Among them : there was strife, deceit, 

and fear : 
Tyrants rushed in, and did divide the 

spoil. 
This was the shadow of the truth I saw. 
The Earth. I felt thy torture, son, 

with such mixt joy 
As pain and virtue give. To cheer thy 

state 
I bid ascend those subtle and fair spirits. 
Whose homes are the dim caves of human 

thought, 
And who inhabit, as birds wing the 

wind, 
Its world-surrounding ether: they be- 
hold 
Beyond that twilight realm, as in a glass, 
The future : may they speak comfort to 

thee! 
Panthea. Look, sister, where a troop 

of spirits gather, 
Like flocks of clouds in spring's delight- 
ful weather. 
Thronging in the blue air ! 

lone. And see ! more come. 
Like fountain-vapors when the winds are 

dumb. 
That climb up the ravine in scattered 

lines. 
And, hark ! is it the music of the pines? 
Is it the lake? Is it the waterfall? 
Panthea. 'T is something sadder, 

sweeter far than all. 
Chorus of Spirits. 
From unremembered ages we 
Gentle guides and guardians be 
Of heaven-opprest mortality; 
And we breathe, and sicken not. 
The atmosphere of human thought : 
Be it dim, and dank, and gray, 
Like a storm-extinguisht day. 
Travelled o'er by dying gleams; 

Be it bright as all between 
Cloudless skies and windless streams, 

Silent, liquid, and serene; 
As the birds within the wind, 



As the fish within the wave. 
As the thoughts of man's own mind 

Float thro' all above the grave; 
We make there our liquid lair. 
Voyaging cloudlike and unpent 
Thro' the boundless element: 
Thence we bear the prophecy 
Which begins and ends in thee ! 

lone. More yet come, one by one; 
the air around them 
Looks radiant as the air around a star. 

First Spirit. 
On a battle-trumpet's blast 
I fled hither, fast, fast, fast, 
Mid the darkness upward cast. 
From the dust of creeds outworn. 
From the tyrant's banner torn. 
Gathering round me, onward borne. 
There was mingled many a cry — 
Freedom ! Hope ! Death ! Victory ! 
Till they faded thro' the sky; 
And one sound, above, around. 
One sound beneath, around, above, 
Was moving; 't was the soul of love; 
'T was the hope, the prophecy, 
Which begins and ends in thee. 

Second Spirit. 
A rainbow's arch stood on the sea, 
Which rockt beneath, immovably; 
And the triumphant storm did flee, 
Like a conqueror, swift and proud. 
Between, with many a captive cloud, 
A shapeless, dark and rapid crowd, 
Each by lightning riven in half: 
I heard the thunder hoarsely laugh : 
Mighty fleets were strewn like chaff 
And spread beneath a hell of death 
O'er the white waters. I alit 
On a great ship lightning-split. 
And speeded hither on the sigh 
Of one who gave an enemy 
His plank, then plunged aside to die. 

Third Spirit. 
I sate beside a sage's bed. 
And the lamp was burning red 
Near the book where he had fed, 
When a Dream with plumes of flame, 
To his pillow hovering came. 
And I knew it was the same 
W'hich had kindled long ago 
Pity, eloquence, and woe; 
And the world awhile below 
Wore the shade, its lustre mada 



274 



I- ROME THE US UNB O UND. 



It has borne me here as fleet 
As Desire's lightning feet: 
I must ride it back ere morrow, 
Or the sage will wake in sorrow. 

Fourth Spirit. 
On a poet's lips I slept 
Dreaming like a love-adept 
In the sound his breathing kept; 
Nor seeks nor finds he mortal blisses, 
But feeds on the aerial kisses 
Of shapes that haunt thought's wilder- 
nesses. 
He will watch from dawn to gloom 
The lake-reflected sun illume 
The yellow bees in the ivy-bloom, 
Nor heed nor see, what things they be; 
But from these create he can 
Forms more real than living man, 
Nurslings of immortality ! 
One of these awakened me, 
And I sped to succor thee. 

lone. 
Behold'st thou not two shapes from the 

east and west 
Come, as two doves to one beloved 

nest, 
Twin nurslings of the all-sustaining air 
On swift still wings glide down the 

atmosphere ? 
And, hark! their sweet, sad voices! 'tis 

despair 
Mingled with love and then dissolved in 

sound. 
Panthea. Canst thou speak, sister? 

all my words are drowned. 
lone. Their beauty gives me voice. 

See how they float 
On their sustaining wings of skyey grain. 
Orange and azure deepening into gold: 
Their soft smiles light the air like a star's 

fire. 

Chorus of Spirits. 
Hast thou beheld the form of love ? 
Fifth Spirit. 

As over wide dominions 
I sped, like some swift cloud that wings 

the wide air's wildernesses. 
That planet -crested shape swept by on 

lightning-braided pinions. 
Scattering the liquid joy of life from his 

ambrosial tresses : 
His footsteps paved the world with light; 

but as I past 'twas fading, 



And hollow Ruin yawned behind: great 

sages bound in madness, 
And headless patriots, and pale youths 

who perished, unupbraiding, 
Gleamed in the night. I wandered o'er, 

till thou, O King of sadness. 
Turned by thy smile the worst I saw to 
recollected gladness. 
Sixth Spirit. 
Ah, sister ! Desolation is a delicate thing : 
It walks not on the earth, it floats not on 

the air. 
But treads with killing footstep, and fans 

with silent wing 
The tender hopes which in their hearts 

the best and gentlest bear; 
Who, soothed to false repose by the fan- 
ning plumes above 
And the music-stirring motion of its soft 

and busy feet, 
Dream visions of aerial joy, and call the 

monster, Love, 
And wake, and find the shadow Pain, as 
he whom now we greet. 
Chorus. 
Tho' Ruin now Love's shadow be, 
Following him, destroyingly. 

On Death's white and winged steed, 
Which the fleetest cannot flee. 

Trampling down both flower and weed 
Man and beast, and foul and fair, 
Like a tempest thro' the air; 
Thou shalt quell this horseman grim, 
Woundless tho' in heart or limb. 

Prometheus. Spirits ! how know ye 
this shall be? 

Chorus. 
In the atmosphere we breathe. 
As buds grow red when the snow-storms 
flee, 
From spring gathering up beneath. 
Whose mild winds shake the elder brake, 
And the wandering herdsmen know 
That the white-thorn soon will blow: 
Wisdom, Justice, Love, and Peace, 
When they struggle to increase, 
Are to us as soft winds be 
To shepherd boys, the prophecy 
Which begins and ends in thee. 
lone. Where are the Spirits fled? 
Panthea. Only a sense 

Remains of them, like the omnipo- 
tence 



PRO ME THE US UNB O UND. 



275 



Of music, when the inspired voice and 

hue 
Languisli, ere yet the responses are mute, 
Which thro' the deep and hibyrinthinc 

soul, 
Like echoes thro' long caverns, wind 

and roll. 
Prometheus. How fair these air-born 

shapes ! and yet I feel 
Most vain all hope but love; and thou 

art far, 
Asia ! who, when my being overflowed, 
Wert like a golden chalice to bright wine 
Which else had sunk into the thirsty dust. 
All things are still: alas! how heavily 
This quiet morning weighs upon my 

heart; 
Tho' I shcnild dream I could even sleep 

with grief 
If slumber were denied not. I would 

fain 
Be what it is my destiny to be. 
The savior and the strength of suffering 

man. 
Or sink into the original gulf of things: 
There is no agony, and no solace left; 
Earth can console. Heaven can torment 

no more. 
Panthea. Hast thou forgotten one 

who watches thee 
The cold dark night, and never sleeps 

but when 
The shadow of thy spirit falls on her? 
Prometheus. I said all hope was vain 

but love: thou lovest. 
Panthea. Deeply in truth; but the 

eastern star looks white. 
And Asia wails in that far Imlian vale 
The scene of her sad exile; rugged 

once 
And desolate and frozen, like this ravine; 
But now invested with fair flowers and 

herbs. 
And haunted by sweet airs and sounds, 

which flow 
Among the woods and waters, from the 

ether 
Of her transforming presence, which 

would fade 
If it were mingled not with thine. Fare- 
well ! 

END OF THE FIRST ACT. 



ACT II. 

SCENE I. — Morning. A lovely 
Vale in the Indian Caucasus. 
Asia alone. 

Asia. From all the blasts of heaven 

thou hast descended : 
Ves, like a spirit, like a thought, which 

makes 
Unwonted tears throng to the horny eyes. 
And beatings haunt the desolated heart. 
Which should have learned repose: thou 

hast descended 
Cradled in tempests; thou dost wake, O 

Spring ! 
O child of many winds ! As suddenly 
Thou comest as the memory of a dream, 
Which now is sad because it hath been 

sweet ; 
Like genius, or like joy which riseth up 
As from the earth, clothing with golden 

clouds 
The desert of our life. 
This is the season, this the day, the hour; 
At sunrise thou shouldst come, sweet 

sister mine, 
Too long desired, too long delaying, 

come ! 
How like death-worms the wingless mo- 
ments crawl ! 
The point of one white star is quivering 

still 
Deep in the orange light of widening 

morn 
Beyond the purple mountains: thro' a 

chasm 
Of wind-divided mist the darker lake 
Reflects it: now it wanes: it gleams 

again 
As the waves fade, and as the burning 

threads 
Of woven cloud unravel in pale air : 
'T is lost ! and thro' yon peaks of cloud- 
like snow 
The roseate sunlight quivers: hear I not 
The /Eolian music of her sea-green 

plumes 
Winnowing the crimson dawn? 

[Panthea enters. 

I feel, I see 

Those eyes which burn thro' smiles that 

fade in tears, 



2/0 



PR OME THE US UNB O UND. 



Like stars half quencht in mists of silver 

dew. 
Beloved and most beautiful, vv'ho wearest 
The shadow of that soul by which I live, 
How late thou art ! the sphered sun had 

climbed 
The sea; my heart was sick with hope, 

before 
The printless air felt thy belated plumes. 
PantJiea. Pardon, great Sister ! but 

my wings were faint 
With the delight of a remembered dream. 
As are the noontide plumes of summer 

winds 
Satiate with sweet flowers. I was wont 

to sleep 
Peacefully, and awake refresht and calm 
Before the sacred Titan's fall, and thy 
Unhappy love, had miade, thro' use and 

pity, 
Both love and wo familiar to my heart 
As they had grown to thine : erewhile I 

slept 
Under the glaucous caverns of old Ocean 
Within dim bowers of green and purple 

moss. 
Our young lone's soft and milky arms 
Locked then, as now, behind my dark, 

moist hair. 
While my shut eyes and cheek were 

pressed within 
The folded depth of her life-breathing 

bosom : 
But not as now, since I am made the 

wind 
Which fails beneath the music that I bear 
Of thy most wordless converse; since 

dissolved 
Into the sense with which love talks, my 

rest 
Was troubled and yet sweet; my waking 

hours 
Too full of care and pain. 

Asia. Lift up thine eyes, 

And let me read thy dream. 

Panthea. As I have said 

With our sea-sister at his feet I slept. 
The mountain mists, condensing at our 

voice 
Under the moon, had spread their snowy 

flakes, 
From the keen ice shielding our linked 

sleep. 



Then two dreams came. One, I remem- 
ber not. 
But in the other his pale wound-worn 

limbs 
Fell from Prometheus, and the azure 

night 
Grew radiant with the glory of that form 
Which lives unchanged witiiin, and his 

voice fell 
Like music which makes giddy the dim 

brain. 
Faint with intoxication of keen joy : 
" Sister of her whose footsteps pave the 

world 
With loveliness — more fair than aught 

but her, 
Whose shadow thou art — lift thine eyes 

on me." 
I lifted them : the overpowering light 
Of that immortal shape was shadowed 

o'er 
By love; which, from his soft and flow- 
ing limbs, 
And passion-parted lips, and keen, faint 

eyes, 
Steamed forth like vaporous fire; an 

atmosphere 
Which wrapt me in its all-dissolving 

power. 
As the warm ether of the morning sun 
Wraps ere it drinks some cloud of wan- 
dering dew. 
I saw not, heard not, moved not, only 

felt 
His presence flow and mingle thro' my 

blood 
Till it became his life, and his grew mine, 
And I was thus absorbed, until it past. 
And like the vapors when the sun sinks 

down, 
Gathering again in drops upon the pines. 
And tremulous as they, in the deep 

night 
My being was condenst; and as the 

rays 
Of thought were slowly gathered, I could 

hear 
His voice, whose accents lingered ere 

they died 
Like footsteps of weak melody : thy 

name 
Among the many sounds alone I heard 
Of what might be articulate; tho' still 



PROMEl^HEUS UNBOUND. 



277 



I listened thro' the night when sound 

was none, 
lone wakened then, and said to me: 
" Canst thou divine what troubles me to- 
night ? 
I always knew what I desired before, 
Nor ever found delight to wish in vain. 
But now I cannot tell thee what I seek; 
I know not; something sweet, since it 

is §weet 
Even to desire; it is thy sport, false 

sister ; 
Thou hast discovered some enchantment 

old, 
Whose spells have stolen my spirit as I 

slept 
And mingled it with thine: for when just 

now 
We kist, I felt within thy parted lips 
The sweet air that sustained me, and the 

warmth 
Of the life-blood, for loss of which I 

faint. 
Quivered between our intertwining 

arms." 
I answered not, for the Eastern star 

grew pale, 
But fled to thee. 

Asia. Thou speakest, but thy words 
Are as the air: I feel them not: O 

lift 
Thine eyes, that I may read his written 

soul ! 
Panthea. I lift them tho' they droop 

beneath the load 
Of that they would express : what canst 

thou see 
But thine own fairest shadow imaged 

there? 
Asia. Thine eyes are like the deep, 

blue, boundless heaven 
Contracted to two circles underneath 
Their long, fine lashes; dark, far, meas- 
ureless. 
Orb within orb, and line thro' line in- 
woven. 
Panthea. Why lookest thou as if a 

spirit past? 
Asia. There is a change: beyond 

their inmost depth 
I see a shade, a shape: 't is He, arrayed 
In the soft light of his own smiles, which 

spread 



Like ladiaiice from the cloud-surrounded 

moon. 
Prometheus, it is thine ! depart not yet ! 
Say not those smiles that we shall meet 

again 
Within that bright pavilion which their 

beams 
Shall build on the waste world? The 

dream is told. 
What shape is that between us? Its 

rude hair 
Roughens the wind that lifts it, its regard 
Is wild and quick, yet 't is a thing of air 
For thro' its gray robe gleams the golden 

dew 
Whose stars the noon has quencht not. 
Dream. Follow! Follow! 

Panthea. It is mine other dream. 
Asia. It disappears. 

Panthea. It passes now into my 

mind. Methought 
As we sate here, the flower-infolding 

buds 
Burst on yon lightning-blasted almond- 
tree. 
When swift from the white Scythian wil- 
derness 
A wind swept forth wrinkling the Earth 

with frost : 
I lookt, and all the blossoms were 

blown down; 
But on each leaf was stampt, as the 

blue bells 
Of Hyacinth tell Apollo's written grief, 

O, FOLLOW, FOLLOW ! 

Asia. As you speak, your words 
Fill, pause by pause, my own forgotten 

sleep 
With shapes. Methought among the 

lawns together 
We wandered, underneath the young 

gray dawn. 
And multitudes of dense white fleecy 

clouds 
Were wandering in thick flocks along 

the mountains 
Shepherded by the slow, unwilling wind; 
And the Avhite dew on the new bladed 

grass. 
Just piercing the dark earth, hung silently : 
And there was more which I remember 

not: 
But on the shadows of the morning clouds, 



278 



PR OME THE US UNB UND. 



Athwart the purple mountain slope, was 

written 
Follow, O, follow ! as they vanisht 

by, 

And on each herb, from which Heaven's 
dew had fallen, 

The like was stampt, as with a wither- 
ing fiire, 

A wind arose among the pines; it shook 

The clinging music from their boughs, 
and then 

Low, sweet, faint sounds, like the fare- 
well of ghosts, 

Were heard: O, follow, follow, fol- 
low ME ! 

And then I said: " Panthea, look on 
me." 

But in the depth of those beloved eyes 

Still I saw, FOLLOW, FOLLOW ! 

Echo. Follow, follow ! 

Panthea. The crags, this clear spring 
morning, mock our voices 
As they were spirit-tongued. 

Asia. It is some being 

Around the crags. What fine clear 
sounds ! O, list ! 

Echoes {^linseen^. 
Echoes we : listen ! 
We cannot stay: 
As dew-stars glisten 
Then fade away — 
Child of Ocean ! 
Asia. Hark ! Spirits speak. The 
liquid responses 
Of their aerial tongues yet sound. 
Panthea. I hear. 

Echoes. 
O, follow, follow. 

As our voice recedeth 
Thro' the caverns hollow, 
Where the forest spreadeth; 
{I\fore distant.') 
O, follow, follow ! 
Thro' the caverns hollow, 
As the song floats thou pursue, 
Where the wild bee never flew. 
Thro' the noontide darkness deep, 
By the odor-breathing sleep 
Of faint night-fiowers, and the waves 
At the fountain-lighted caves. 
While our music, wild and sweet. 
Mocks thy gently falling feet. 
Child of Ocean ! 



Asia. Shall we pursue the sound? It 
grows more faint 
And distant. 

Panthea. List ! the strain floats 

nearer now. 

Echoes. 
In the world unknown 

Sleeps a voice unspoken; 
By thy step alone 

Can its rest be broken; 
Child of Ocean ! 
Asia. How the notes sink upon the 
ebbing wind ! 

Echoes. 
O, follow, follow ! 
Thro' the caverns hollow, 
As the song floats thou pursue. 
By the woodland noontide dew; 
By the forests, lakes, and fountains 
Thro' the many-folded mountains; 
To the rents, and gulfs, and chasms. 
Where the Earth reposed from spasms, 
On the day when He and thou 
Parted, to commingle now; 
Child of Ocean ! 
Asia. Come, sweet Panthea, link thy 
hand in mine, 
And follow, ere the voices fade away. 

SCENE II. — A Forest, intermin- 
gled WITH Rocks and Caverns. 

Asia and Panthea pass into it. Two 
young Fauns are sitting on a Rock 
listening. 

Semichorus T. of Spirits. 
The path thro' which that lovely twain 
Have past, by cedar, pine, and yew. 
And each dark tree that ever grew. 
Is curtained out from Heaven's wide 

blue; 
Nor sun, nor moon, nor wind, nor rain, 
Can pierce its interwoven bowers. 
Nor aught, save where some cloud of 
dew. 
Drifted along the earth-creeping breeze, 
Between the trunks of the hoar trees, 
Hangs each a pearl in the pale 
flowers 
Of the green laurel, blown anew; 
And bends, and then fades silently. 
One frail and fair anemone : ... 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 



279 



Or when some star of many a one 
That dimbs and wanders thro' steep night, 
Has found the cleft thro' which alone 
Beams fall from high those depths upon 
Ere it is borne away, away, 
By the swift Heavens that cannot stay, 
It scatters drops of golden light. 
Like lines of rain that ne'er unite: 
And the gloom divine is all around. 
And underneath is the mossy ground. 

Semichoriis II. 
There the voluptuous nightingales. 

Are awake thro' all the broad noon- 
day. 
When one with bliss or sadness fails, 

And thro' the windless ivy-boughs. 
Sick with sweet love, droops dying 
away 
On its mate's music-panting bosom; 
Another from the swinging blossom, 

Watching to catch the languid close 
Of the last strain, then lifts on high 
The wings of the weak melody, 
Till some new strain of feeling bear 

The song, and all the woods are mute; 
When there is heard thro' the dim air 
The rush of wings, and rising there 

Like many a lake-surrounded flute, 
Sounds overflow the listener's brain 
So sweet, that joy is almost pain. 

Semichorus I. 
There those enchanted eddies play 

Of echoes, music-tongued, which draw. 
By Demogorgon's mighty law, 
With melting rapture, or sweet awe, 
All spirits on that secret way; 

As inland boats are driven to Ocean 
Down streams made strong with moun- 
tain-thaw : 
And first there comes a gentle sound 
To those in talk or slumber bound. 
And wakes the destined. Soft emo- 
tion 
Attracts, impels them : those who saw 
Say from the breathing earth behind 
There steams a plume-uplifting wind 
Which drives them on their path, while 
they 
Believe their own swift wings and feet 
The sweet desires within obey: 
And so they float upon their way. 
Until, still sweet, but loud and strong. 
The storm of sound is driven along, 



Suckt up and hurrying: as they fleet 
Behind, its gathering billows meet 
And to the fatal mountain bear 
Like clouds amid the yielding air. 

First Fumi. Canst thou imagine 
where those spirits live 
Which make such delicate music in the 

woods? 
We haunt within the least frequented 

caves 
And closest coverts, and we know these 

wilds, 
Yet never meet them, tho' we hear them 

oft: 
Where may they hide themselves? 

Second Faun. 'T is hard to tell: 

I have heard those more skilled in spirits 

say. 
The bubbles, which the enchantment of 

the sun 
Sucks from the pale faint water-flowers 

that pave 
The oozy bottom of clear lakes and 

pools, 
Are the pavilions where such dwell and 

float 
Under the green and golden atmosphere 
W^hich noontide kindles thro' the woven 

leaves; 
And when these burst, and the thin fiery 

air, 
The which they breathed within those 

lucent domes. 
Ascends to flow like meteors thro' the 

night. 
They ride on them, and rein their head- 
long speed. 
And bow their burning crests, and glide 

in fire 
Under the waters of the earth again. 
First Faun. If such live thus, have 
others other lives. 
Under pink blossoms or within the bells 
Of meadow flowers, or folded violets 

deep, 
Or on their dying odors, when they die. 
Or in the sunlight of the sphered dew? 
Second Faun. Ay, many more which 
we may well divine. 
But, should we stay to speak, noontide 

would come. 
And thwart Silenus find his goats un- 
drawn, 



28o 



PR OME THE US UNB O UND. 



And grudge to sing those wise and lovely 

songs 
Of fate, and chance, and God, and 

Chaos old, 
And Love, and the chained Titan's wo- 

ful doom. 
And how he shall be loost, and make 

the earth 
One brotherhood: delightful strains 

which cheer 
Our solitary twilights, and which charm 
To silence the unenvying nightingales. 

SCENE III.— A Pinnacle OF Rock 
AMONG Mountains. Asia and 
Panthea. 

Panthea. Hither the sound has borne 

us — to the realm 
Of Demogorgon, and the mighty portal, 
Like a volcano's meteor-breathing chasm. 
Whence the oracular vapor is hurled up 
Which lonely men drink wandering in 

their youth, 
And call truth, virtue, love, genius, or 

joy. 

That maddening wine of life, whose 

dregs they drain 
To deep intoxication; and uplift. 
Like Maenads who cry loud, Evoe ! 

Evoe ! 
The voice which is contagion to the 

world. 
Asia. Fit throne for such a power ! 

Magnificent ! 
How glorious art thou. Earth ! And if 

thou be 
The shadow of some spirit lovelier still, 
Though evil stain its work, and it should 

be 
Like its creation, weak yet beautiful, 
I could fall down and worship that and 

thee. 
Even now my heart adoreth : Wonder- 
ful ! 
Look, sister, ere the vapor dim thy 

brain : 
Beneath is a wide plain of billowy mist. 
As a lake, paving in the morning sky. 
With azure waves which burst in silver 

light, 
Some Indian vale. Behold it, rolling on 
Under the curdling winds, and islanding 



The peak whereon we stand, midway. 

around, 
Encinctured by the dark and blooming 

forests, 
Dim twilight-lawns, and stream-illumined 

caves. 
And wind-enchanted shapes of wander- 
ing mist; 
And far on high the keen sky-cleaving 

mountains 
From icy spires of sun-like radiance fling 
The dawn, as lifted Ocean's dazzling 

spray. 
From some Atlantic islet scattered up, 
Spangles the wind with lamp-like water- 
drops. 
The vale is girdled with their walls, a 

howl 
Of cataracts from their thaw - cloven 

ravines. 
Satiates the listening wind, continuous, 

vast. 
Awful as silence. Hark ! the rushing 

snow ! 
The sun-awakened avalanche ! whose 

mass, 
Thrice sifted by the storm, had gathered 

there 
Flake after flake, in heaven - defying 

minds 
As thought by thought is piled, till some 

great truth 
Is loosened, and the nations echo round. 
Shaken to their roots, as do the moun- 
tains now. 
Panthea. Look how the gusty sea of 

mist is breaking 
In crimson foam, even at our feet ! it 

rises 
As Ocean at the enchantment of the 

moon 
Round foodless men wreckt on some 

oozy isle. 
Asia. The fragments of the cloud 

are scattered up; 
The wind that lifts them disentwines 

my hair; 
Its billows now sweep o'er mine eyes; 

my brain 
Grows dizzy; I see thin shapes within 

the mist. 
Panthea. A countenance with beckon- 
ing smiles: there burns 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 



281 



An azure fire within its golden locks ! 
Another and another : hark ! they 
speak ! 

Song of Spirits. 
To the deep, to the deep, 

Down, down ! 
Through the shade of sleep, 
Through the cloudy strife 
Of Death and of Life; 
Through the veil and the bar 
Of things which seem and are 
Even to the steps of the remotest throne, 

Down, down ! 
While the sound whirls around, 

Down, down ! 
As the fawn draws the hound. 
As the lightning the vapor. 
As a weak moth the taper; 
Death, despair; love, sorrow; 
Time both; to-day, to-morrow; 
As steel obeys the spirit of the stone, 

Down, down ! 

Through the gray, void abysm, 

Down, down ! 
Where the air is no prism. 
And the moon and stars are not, 
And the cavern-crags wear not 
The radiance of Heaven, 
Nor the gloom to Earth given, 
Where there is one pervading, one alone, 

Down, down ! 

In the depth of the deep 

Down, down ! 
Like veiled lightning asleep, 
Like the spark nursed in embers. 
The last look Love remembers. 
Like a diamond, which shines 
On the dark wealth of mines, 
A spell is treasured but for thee alone. 

Down, down ! 

We have bound thee, we guide thee; 

Down, down ! 
With the bright form beside thee; 
Resist not the weakness. 
Such strength is in meekness 
That the Eternal, the Immortal, 
Must unloose through life's portal 
The snake-like Doom coiled underneath 
his throne 

By that alone. 



SCENE IV.— The Cave of 
Demogorgox. Asia a)id Panthea. 

Panthea. What veiled form sits on 

that ebon throne? 
Asia. The veil has fallen. 
Pafithea. I see a mighty darkness 

Filling the seat of power, and rays of 

gloom 
Dart round, as light from the meridian 

sun, 
Ungazed upon and shapeless; neither 

limb. 
Nor form, nor outline; yet we feel it is 
A living Spirit. 

Detnogorgon. Ask what thou would'st 

know. 
Asia. What canst thou tell? 
DeiHogorgon. All things thou 

dar'st demand. 
Asia. Who made the living world? 
De7}iogorgon. God. 

Asia. Who made all 

That it contains? thought, passion, rea- 
son, will. 
Imagination? 

Demogorgon. God: Almighty God. 
Asia. Who made that sense which, 
when the winds of spring 
In rarest visitation, or the voice 
Of one beloved heard in youth alone. 
Fills the faint eyes with falling tears 

which dim 
The radiant looks of unbewailing flowers, 
And leaves this peopled earth a solitude 
When it returns no more? 

Demogorgon. Merciful God. 

Asia. And who made terror, madness, 
crime, remorse. 
Which from the links of the great chain 

of things, 
To every thought within the mind of man 
Sway and drag heavily, and each one reels 
Under the load towards the pit of death; 
Abandoned hope, and love that turns to 

hate; 
And self-contempt, bitterer to drink than 

blood ; 
Pain, whose unheeded and familiar speech 
Is howling, and keen shrieks, day after 

day; 
And Hell, or the sharp fear of Hell? 



PR OME THE US UNB O UND. 



Demogorgon. He reigns. 

Asia. Utter his name : a world pining 
in pain 
Asks but his name : curses shall drag him 
down. 
Demogorgon. He reigns. 
Asia. I feel, I know it: who? 

Demogorgon. He reigns. 

Asia. Who reigns? There was the 
Heaven and Earth at first, 
And Light and Love; then Saturn, from 

whose throne 
Time fell, an envious shadow: such the 

state 
Of the earth's primal spirits beneath his 

sway, 
As the calm joy of flowers and living 

leaves 
Before the wind or sun has withered 

them 
And semivital worms; but he refused 
The birthright of their being, knowledge, 

power. 
The skill which wields the elements, the 

thought 
"Which pierces this dim universe like 

light. 
Self-empire, and the majesty of love; 
For thirst of which they fainted. Then 

Prometheus 
Gave wisdom, which is strength, to Jupi- 
ter, 
And with this law alone, " Let man be 

free," 
Clothed him with the dominion of wide 

Heaven. 
To know nor faith, nor love, nor law; 

to be 
Omnipotent but friendless is to reign; 
And Jove now reigned; for on the race 

of man 
First famine, and then toil, and then 

disease. 
Strife, wounds, and ghastly death unseen 

before. 
Fell; and the unseasonable seasons 

drove 
With alternating shafts of frost and fire, 
Their shelterless, pale tribes to mountain 

caves : 
And in their desert hearts fierce wants he 

sent, 
And mad disquietudes, and shadows idle 



Of unreal good, which levied mutual war, 
So ruining the lair wherein they raged. 
Prometheus saw, and waked the legioned 

hopes 
Which sleep within folded Elysian 

flowers. 
Nepenthe, Moly, Amaranth, fadeless 

blooms, 
That they might hide with thin and rain- 
bow wings 
The shape of Death; and Love he sent 

to bind 
The disunited tendrils of that vine 
Which bears the wine of life, the human 

heart; 
And he tamed fire which, like some beast 

of prey. 
Most terrible, but lovely, played beneath 
The frown of man; and tortured to his 

will 
Iron and gold, the slaves and signs of 

power. 
And gems and poisons, and all subtlest 

forms 
Hidden beneath the mountains and the 

waves. 
He gave man speech, and speech created 

thought. 
Which is the measure of the universe; 
And Science struck the thrones of earth 

and heaven. 
Which shook, but fell not; and the har- 
monious mind 
Poured itself forth in all-prophetic song; 
And music lifted up the listening spirit 
Until it walkt, exempt froin mortal care, 
Godlike, o'er the clear billows of sweet 

sound ; 
And human hands first mimickt and 

then mockt. 
With moulded limbs more lovely than its 

own, 
The human form, till marble grew divine; 
And mothers, gazing, drank the love men 

see 
Reflected in their race, behold , and perish . 
He told the hidden power of herbs and 

springs. 
And Disease drank and slept. Death 

grew like sleep. 
He taught the implicated orbits woven 
Of the wide-wandering stars; and how 
the sun 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 



283 



Changes his lair, and by what secret spell 
The pale moon is transformed, when her 

broad eye 
Gazes,not on the interlunar sea: 
He taught to rule, as life directs the 

limbs. 
The tempest-winged chariots of the 

Ocean, 
And the Celt knew the Indian. Cities 

then 
Were built, and through their snow-like 

columns flowed 
The warm winds, and the azure ether 

shone, 
And the blue sea and shadowy hills were 

seen. 
Such, the alleviations of his state, 
Prometheus gave to man, for which he 

hangs 
Withering in destined pain : but who 

rains down 
Evil, the immedicable plague, which, 

while 
Man looks on his creation like a God 
And sees that it is glorious, drives him on 
The wreck of his own will, the scorn of 

earth, 
The outcast, the abandoned, the alone? 
Not Jove: while yet his frown shook 

heaven, ay when 
His adversary from adamantine chains 
Curst him, he trembled like a slave. 

Declare 
Who is his master? Is he too a slave? 
Demogorgon. All spirits are enslaved 

which serve things evil : 
Thou knowest if Jupiter be such or no. 
Asia. Whom called'st thou God? 
Demogorgon. I spoke but as ye 

speak. 
For Jove is the supreme of living things. 
Asia, Who is the master of the slave? 
Deniogagon. If the abysm 

Could vomit forth its secrets. . . But a 

voice 
Is wanting, the deep truth is imageless; 
For what would it avail to bid thee 

gaze 
On the revolving world? What to bid 

speak 
Fate, Time, Occasion, Chance, and 

Change? To these 
All things are subject but eternal Love. 



Asia. So much I askt before, and 

my heart gave 
The response thou hast given; and of 

such truths 
Each to itself must be the oracle. 
One more demand; and do thou answer 

me 
As mine own soul would answer, did it 

know 
That which I ask. Prometheus shall 

arise 
Henceforth the sun of this rejoicing 

world : 
When shall the destined hour arrive? 
Demogorgon. Behold ! 

Asia. The rocks are cloven, and 

through the purple night 
I see cars drawn by rainbow-winged 

steeds 
Which trample the dim winds: in each 

there stands 
A wild-eyed charioteer urging their 

flight. 
Some look behind, as fiends pursued 

them there. 
And yet I see no shapes but the keen 

stars: 
Others, with burning eyes, lean forth, 

and drink 
With eager lips the wind of their own 

speed, 
As if the thing they loved fled on before, 
And now, even now, they claspt it. 

Their bright locks 
Stream like a comet's flashing hair: they 

all 
Sweep onward. 

Demogorgon. These are the immortal 

Hours, 
Of whom thou didst demand. One waits 

for thee. 
Asia. A spirit with a dreadful coun- 
tenance 
Checks its dark chariot by the craggy 

gulf. 
Unlike thy brethren, ghastly charioteer, 
Who art thou? Whither wouldst thou 

bear me ? Speak ! 
Spirit. I am the shadow of a destiny 
More dread than is my aspect : ere yon 

planet 
Has set, the darkness which ascends 

with me 



284 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 



Shall wrap in lasting night heaven's king- 
less throne. 
Asia. What meanest thou? 
Panthea. That terrible shadow 

floats 
Up from its throne, as may the lurid 

smoke 
Of earthquake-ruined cities o'er the sea. 
Lo! it ascends the car; the coursers fly 
Terrified : watch its path among the stars 
Blackening the night ! 

Asia. Thus I am answered: 

strange ! 
Panthea. See, near the verge, another 
chariot stays; 
An ivory shell inlaid with crimson fire, 
Which comes and goes within its sculp- 
tured rim 
Of delicate strange tracery; the young 

spirit 
That guides it has the dove-like eyes 

of hope; 
How its soft smiles attract the soul ! as 

light 
Lures winged insects through the lamp- 
less air. 

Spirit. 
My coursers are fed with the lightning. 

They drink of the whirlwind's stream. 

And when the red morning is brightning 

They bathe in the fresh sunbeam; 

They have strength for their swiftness 

I deem, 

Then ascend with me, daughter of Ocean. 

I desire: and their speed makes night 
kindle; 
I fear: they outstrip the typhoon; 

Ere the cloud piled on Atlas can dwindle 
We encircle the earth and the moon: 
We shall rest from long labors at noon : 

Then ascend with me, daughter of Ocean. 

SCENE V. —The Car Pauses within 
A Cloud on the Top of a snowy 
Mountain. Asia, Panthea, and the 
Spirit of the Hour. 

Spirit. 
On the brink of the night and the morn- 
ing 
My coursers are wont to respire; 
But the Earth has just whispered a warn- 
ing 



That their flight must be swifter than 

fire: 
They shall drink the hot speed of 

desire ! ^ 

Asia. Thou breathest on their nostrils, 
but my breath 
Would give them swifter speed. 

Spirit. Alas! it could not. 

Panthea. Oh Spirit ! pause, and tell 
whence is the light 
Which fills the cloud? the sun is yet un- 
risen. 
Spirit. The sun will rise not until 
noon. Apollo 
Is held in heaven by wonder; and the 

light 
Which fills this vapor, as the aerial hue 
Of fountain-gazing roses fills the water, 
Flows from thy mighty sister. 

Panthea. Yes, I feel — 

Asia. What is it with thee, sister? 

Thou art pale. 
Panthea. How thou art changed ! I 
dare not look on thee; 
I feel but see thee not. I scarce endure 
The radiance of thy beauty. Some good 

change 
Is working in the elements, which suffer 
Thy presence thus unveiled. The Nereids 

tell 
That on the day when the clear hyaline 
Was cloven at thy uprise and thou didst 

stand 
W'ithin a veined shell, which floated on 
Over the calm floor of the crystal sea, 
Among the /Egean isles, and by the 

shores 
Which bear thy name; love, like the 

atmosphere 
Of the sun's fire filling the living world. 
Burst from thee, and illumined earth and 

heaven 
And the deep ocean and the sunless 

caves 
And all that dwells within them; till 

grief cast 
Eclipse upon the soul from which it 

came : 
Such art thou now; nor is it I alone, 
Thy sister, thy companion, thine own 

chosen one, 
But the whole world which seeks thy 
sympathy. 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 



285 



Hearest thou not sounds i' the air which 

speak the love 
Of all articulate beings? Feelest thou 

not 
The inanimate winds enamoured of thee ? 

List! (Music.) 
Asia. Thy words are sweeter than 

aught else but his 
Whose echoes they are : yet all love is 

sweet, 
Given or returned. Common as light 

is love, 
And its familiar voice wearies not ever. 
Like the wide heaven, the all-sustaining 

air. 
It makes the reptile equal to the God : 
They who inspire it most are fortunate, 
As I am now ; but those who feel it most 
Are happier still, after long sufferings, 
As I shall soon become. 

Fanthea. List ! Spirits speak. 

Voice in the .lir, singing. 
Life of Life ! thy lips enkindle 

With their love the breath between 

them; 
And thy smiles before they dwindle 
Make the cold air fire; then screen 

them 
In those looks, where whoso gazes 
Faints, entangled in their mazes. 

Child of Light ! thy limbs are burning 
Thro' the vest which seems to hide 
them; 

As the radiant lines of morning 

Thro' the clouds ere they divide them; 

And this atmosphere divinest 

Shrouds thee wheresoe'er thou shinest. 

Fair are others; none beholds thee, 
But thy voice sounds low and tender 

Like the fairest, for it folds thee 

From the sight, that liquid splendor, 

And all feel, yet see thee never. 

As I feel now, lost for ever ! 

Lamp of Earth ! where'er thou movest 
Its dim shapes are clad with bright- 
ness, 

And the souls of whom thou lovest 
Walk upon the winds with lightness, 

Till they fail, as I am failing, 

Dizzy, lost, yet unbe wailing ! 



Asia. 
My soul is an enchanted boat. 
Which, like a sleeping swan, doth 
float 
Upon the silver waves of thy sweet 
singing; 
And thine doth like an angel sit 
Beside a helm conducting it. 
Whilst all the winds with melody are 
ringing. 
It seems to float ever, for ever, 
Upon that many-winding river. 
Between mountains, woods, abysses, 
A paradise of wildernesses ! 
Till, like one in slumber bound, 
Borne to the ocean, I float down, around, 
Into a sea profound, of ever-spreading 
sound : 

Meanwhile thy spirit lifts its pinions 
In music's most serene dominions; 
Catching the winds that fan that happy 
heaven. 
And we sail on, away, afar, 
W^ithout a course, without a star. 
But, by the instinct of sweet music 
driven; 
Till through Elysian garden islets 
By thee, most beautiful of pilots, 
Where never mortal pinnace glided, 
The boat of my desire is guided : 
Realms where the air we breathe is love. 
Which in the winds and on the waves 

doth move, 
Harmonizing this earth with what we 
feel above. 

We have past Age's icy caves. 
And Manhood's dark and tossing 
waves. 
And Youth's smooth ocean, smiling to 
betray : 
Beyond the glassy gulfs we flee 
Of shadow-peopled Infancy, 
Through Death and Birth, to a diviner 
day; 
A paradise of vaulted bowers. 
Lit by downward-gazing flowers. 
And watery paths that wind between 
Wildernesses calm and green, 
Peopled by shapes too bright to see, 
And rest, having beheld; somewhat like 
thee; 



r.86 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 



V'7hich walk upon the sea, and chant 
melodioi sly ! 

END OF THE SECOND ACT. 



ACT III. 

SCENE I. — Heaven. Jupiter cp« /^zj 
Throne ; Thetis and the other Deities 
assembled. 

Jupiter. Ye congregated powers of 

heaven, who share 
The glory and the strength of him ye 

serve, 
Rejoice ! henceforth I am omnipotent. 
All else had been subdued to me; alone 
The soul of man, like unextinguisht 

fire. 
Yet burns towards heaven with fierce 

reproach, and doubt, 
And lamentation, and reluctant prayer. 
Hurling up insurrection, which might 

make 
Our antique empire insecure, though 

built 
On eldest faith, and hell's coeval, fear; 
And tho' my curses thro' the pendulous 

air. 
Like snow on herbless peaks, fall flake 

by flake, 
And cling to it; tho' under my wrath's 

night 
It climbs the crags of life, step after step, 
Which wound it, as ice wounds un- 

sandalled feet. 
It yet remains supreme o'er misery, 
Aspiring, unreprest, yet soon to fall: 
Even now have I begotten a strange 

wonder. 
That fatal child, the terror of the earth, 
Who waits but till the destined hour 

arrive. 
Bearing from Demogorgon's vacant 

throne 
The dreadful might of ever-living limbs 
Which clothed that awful spirit unbe- 

held. 
To redescend, and trample out the spark. 

Pour forth heaven's wine, Idgean Gany- 
mede, 



And let it fill the daedal cups like fire. 
And from the flower-inwoven soil divine 
Ye all-triumphant harmonies arise. 
As dew from earth under the twilight 

stars : 
Drink ! be the nectar circling thro' your 

veins 
The soul of joy, ye ever-living Gods, 
Till exultation burst in one wide voice 
Like music from Elysian winds. 

And thou 
Ascend beside me, veiled in the light 
Of the desire which makes thee one with 

me, 
Thetis, bright image of eternity ! 
When thou didst cry, " Insufferable 

might ! 
God ! Spare me ! I sustain not the 

quick flames. 
The penetrating presence; all my being, 
Like him whom the Numidian seps did 

thaw 
Into a dew with poison, is dissolved. 
Sinking thro' its foundations: " even 

then 
Two maghty spirits, mingling, made a 

third 
Mightier than either, which, unbodied 

now. 
Between us floats, felt, although unbe- 

held, 
Waiting the incarnation, which ascends, 
(Hear ye the thunder of the fiery wheels 
Griding the winds?) from Demogorgon's 

throne. 
Victory ! victory ! Feel'st thou not, O 

world. 
The earthquake of his chariot thunder- 
ing up 
Olympus? 

[ The Car of the HoUR arrives. 
Demogorgon descends, and moves 
to"vards the Throne of JUPITER. 

Awful shape, what art thou? 

Speak ! . ;. 

Defuo^^orgon. Eternity. Derhand no 

direr name. 
Descend, and follow me down the 

abyss. 
I am thy child, as thou wert Saturn's 

child; 
Mightier than thee: and we must dwell 

together 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 



287 



Henceforth in darkness. Lift thy light- 
nings not. 
The tyranny of heaven none may retain, 
Or reassume, or hold, succeeding thee: 
Yet if thou wilt, as 't is the destiny 
Of trodden worms to writhe till they are 

dead. 
Put forth thy might. 

Jupiter. Detested prodigy ! 

Even thus beneath the deep Titanian 

prisons 
I trample thee ! thou lingerest? 

Mercy ! mercy ! 
No pity, no release, no respite ! Oh, 
That thou wouldst make mine enemy my 

judge, 
Even where he hangs, seared by my long 

revenge. 
On Caucasus ! he would not doom me 

thus. 
Gentle, and just, and dreadless, is he 

not 
The monarch of the world? What then 

art thou? 
No refuge ! no appeal ! 

Sink with me then, 
We too will sink on the wide waves of 

ruin, 
Even as a vulture and a snake outspent 
Drop, twisted in inextricable fight. 
Into a shoreless sea. Let hell unlock 
Its mounded oceans of tempestuous fire, 
And whelm on them into the bottomless 

void 
This desolated world, and thee, and me. 
The conqueror and the conquered, and 

the wreck 
Of that for which they combated. 

Ai! Ai! 
The elements obey me not. I sink 
Dizzily down, ever, for ever, down. 
And, like a cloud, mine enemy above 
Darkens my fall with victory ! Ai, Ai ! 

SCENE II. — The Mouth of a great 
River in the Island Atlantis. 
Ocean is discovered reclining near the 
Shore ; APOLLO stands beside him. 

Ocean. He fell, thou sayest, beneath 

his conqueror's frown? 
Apollo. Aye, when the strife was 

ended which made dim 



The orb I rule, and shook the solid stars, 
The terrors of his eye illumined heaven 
With sanguine light, through the thick 

ragged skirts 
Of the victorious darkness, as he fell: 
Like the last glare of day's red agony, 
Which, from a rent among the fiery 

clouds. 
Burns far along the tempest-wrinkled 

deep. 
Ocean. He sunk to the abyss? To 

the dark void? 
Apollo. An eagle so caught in some 

bursting cloud 
On Caucasus, his thunder-baffled wings 
Entangled in the whirlwind, and his eyes 
Which gazed on the undazzling sun, now 

blinded 
By the white lightning, while the pon- 
derous hail 
Beats on his struggling form, which 

sinks at length 
Prone, and the aerial ice clings over it. 
Ocean. Henceforth the fields of 

Heaven-reflecting sea 
Which are my realm, will heave, un- 
stained with blood. 
Beneath the uplifting winds, like plains 

of corn 
Swayed by the summer air ; my streams 

will flow 
Round many-peopled continents, and 

round 
Fortunate isles; and from their glassy 

thrones 
Blue Proteus and his humid nymphs 

shall mark 
The shadow of fair ships, as mortals see 
The floating bark of the light-laden moon 
With that white star, its sightless pilot's 

crest, 
Borne down the rapid sunset's ebbing 

sea; 
Tracking their path no more by blood 

and groans, 
And desolation, and the mingled voice 
Of slavery and command; but by the 

light 
Of wave-reflected flowers, and floating 

odors. 
And music soft, and mild, free, gentle 

voices. 
And sweetest music, such as spirits love. 



288 



PR OMK THE US UNB O UND. 



Apollo. And I shall gaze not on the 
deeds which make 

My mind obscure with sorrow, as eclipse 

Darkens the sphere I guide. But list, I 
hear 

The small, clear, silver lute of the young 
Spirit 

That sits i' the morning star. 

Ocean. Thou must away; 

Thy steeds will pause at even, till when 
farewell : 

The loud deep calls me home even now 
to feed it 

With azure calm out of the emerald urns 

Which stand for ever full beside my 
throne. 

Behold the Nereids under the green sea, 

Their wavering limbs borne on the wind- 
like stream. 

Their white arms lifted o'er their stream- 
ing hair 

With garlands pied and starry sea-fiower 
crowns. 

Hastening to grace their mighty sister's 
joy. 

\_A sound of naves is heard. 

It is the unpastured sea hungering for 
calm. 

Peace, monster; I come now. Fare- 
well. 
Apollo. Farewell. 



SCENE III. — Caucasus. Prometheus, 

Hercules, Ione,///^ Earth, Spirits, 

Asia, ^/z/^/Panthea, borne in the Car 

ivith the Spirit of the Hour. 

Hercules unbinds Prometheus, 

who descends. 

Hercules. Most glorious among 
spirits, thus doth strength 
To wisdom, courage, and long-suffering 

love, 
And thee, who art the form they ani- 
mate. 
Minister like a slave. 

Prometheus. Thy gentle words 

Are swedter even than freedom long de- 

sir' d 
And long delayed. 

Asia, thou light of life, 
Shadow of beauty unbeheld: and ye, 



Fair sister nymphs, who made long years 

of pain 
Sweet to remember, thro' your love and 

care : 
Henceforth we will not part. There is 

a cave. 
All overgrown with trailing odorous 

plants. 
Which curtain out the day with leaves 

and flowers. 
And paved with veined emerald; and a 

fountain 
Leaps in the midst with an awakening 

sound. 
From its curved roof the mountain's 

frozen tears 
Like snow, or silver, or long diamond 

spires. 
Hang downward, raining forth a doubt- 
ful light : 
And there is heard the ever-moving air, 
Whispering without from tree to tree, 

and birds, 
And bees; and all around are mossy 

seats, 
And the rough walls are clothed with 

long soft grass; 
A simple dwelling, which shall be our 

own; 
Where we will sit and talk of time and 

change. 
As the world ebbs and flows, ourselves 

unchanged. 
What can hide man from mutability? 
And if ye sigh, then I will smile; and 

thou, 
lone, shalt chant fragments of sea- 
music, 
Until I weep, when ye shall smile away 
The tears she brought, which yet were 

sweet to shed. 
We will entangle buds and flowers and 

beams 
Which twinkle on the fountain's brim, 

and make 
Strange combinations out of common 

things, 
Like human babes in their brief inno- 
cence ; 
And we will search, with looks and 

words of love, 
For hidden thoughts, each lovelier than 

the last, 



PRO ME THE US UNBOUND. 



289 



Our unexhausted spirits ; and like lutes 
Toucht by the skill of the enamoured 

wind, 
Weave harmonies divine, yet ever new, 
From difference sweet where discord 

cannot be ; 
And hither come, sped on the charmed 

winds. 
Which meet from all the points of 

heaven, as bees 
From every flower aerial Enna feeds. 
At their known island-homes in Himera, 
The echoes of the human world, which 

tell 
Of the low voice of love, almost un- 
heard. 
And dove-eyed pity's murmured pain, 

and music. 
Itself the echo of the heart, and all 
That tempers or improves man's life, now 

free ; 
And lovely apparitions, dim at first, 
Then radiant, as the mind, arising 

bright 
From the embrace of beauty, whence 

the forms 
Of which these are the phantoms, cast 

on them 
The gathered rays which are reality. 
Shall visit us, the progeny immortal 
Of Painting, Sculpture, and rapt Poesy, 
And arts, tho' unimagined, yet to be. 
The wandering voices and the shadows 

these 
Of all that man becomes, the mediators 
Of that best worship, love, by him and 

us 
Given and returned ; swift shapes and 

sounds, which grow 
More fair and soft as man grows wise 

and kind, 
And, veil by veil, evil and error fall: 
Such virtue has the cave and place 

around. 
[ Turning to the Spirit of the Hour. 
For thee, fair Spirit, one toil remains. 

lone. 
Give her that curved shell, which Pro- 
teus old 
Made Asia's nuptial boon, breathing 

within it 
A voice to be accomplisht, and which 

thou 



Didst hide in grass under the hollow 

rock. 
lone. Thou most desired Hour, more 

loved and lovely 
Than all thy sisters, this is the mystic 

shell; 
See the pale azure fading into silver 
Lining it with a soft yet glowing light : 
Looks it not like lulled music sleeping 

there? 
Spirit. It seems in truth the fairest 

shell of Ocean : 
Its sounds must be at once both sweet 

and strange. 
Prometheus. Go, borne over the 

cities of mankind 
On whirlwind-footed coursers : once 

again 
Outspeed the sun around the orbed 

world ; 
And as thy chariot cleaves the kindling 

air. 
Thou breathe into the many-folded shell, 
Loosening its mighty music ; it shall be 
As thunder mingled with clear echoes: 

then 
Return ; and thou shalt dwell beside our 

cave. 
And thou, O, Mother Earth ! — 

The Earth. I hear, I feel ; 

Thy lips are on me, and thy touch runs 

down 
Even to the adamantine central gloom 
Along these marble nerves; 'tis life, 'tis 

joy. 
And thro' my withered, old, and icy 

frame 
The warmth of an immortal youth shoots 

down 
Circling. Henceforth the many chil- 
dren fair 
Folded in my sustaining arms ; all 

plants, 
And creeping forms, and insects rainbow- 
winged, 
And birds, and beasts, and fish, and 

human shapes, 
Which drew disease and pain from my 

wan bosom. 
Draining the poison of despair, shall 

take 
And interchange sweet nutriment ; to me 
Shall they become like sister-antelopes 



290 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 



By one fair dam, snow-white, and swift 

as wind, 
Nurst among lilies near a brimming 

stream. 
The dew-mists of my sunless sleep shall 

float 
Under the stars like balm: night-folded 

flowers 
Shall suck unwithering hues in their 

repose : 
And men and beasts in happy dreams 

shall gather 
Strength for the coming day, and all its 

joy: 
And death shall be the last embrace of 

her 
Who takes the life she gave, even as a 

mother 
Folding her child, says, " Leave me not 

again." 
Asia. O mother ! wherefore speak 

the name of death? 
Cease they to love, and move, and 

breathe, and speak, 
Who die? 

The Earth. It would avail not to 

reply : 
Thou art immortal, and this tongue is 

known 
But to the uncommunicating dead. 
Death is the veil which those who live 

call life: 
They sleep, and it is lifted: and mean- 
while 
In mild variety the seasons mild 
With rainbow - skirted showers, and 

odorous winds. 
And long blue meteors cleansing the 

dull night. 
And the life-kindling shafts of the keen 

sun's 
All-piercing bow, and the dew-mingled 

rain 
Of the calm moonbeams, a soft influence 

mild, 
Shall clothe the forests and the fields, 

ay, even 
The crag-built deserts of the barren 

deep, 
With ever-living leaves, and fruits, and 

flowers. 
And thou ! There is a cavern where my 

spirit 



Was panted forth in anguish whilst thy 

pain 
Made my heart mad, and those who did 

inhale it 
Became mad too, and built a temple 

there, 
And spoke, and were oracular, and 

lured 
The erring nations round to mutual 

war. 
And faithless faith, such as Jove kept 

with thee ; 
Which breath now rises, as amongst tall 

weeds 
A violet's exhalation, and it fills 
With a serener light and crimson air 
Intense, yet soft, the rocks and woods 

around ; 
It feeds the quick growth of the serpent 

vine, 
And the dark linked ivy tangling wild, 
And budding, blown, or odor-faded 

blooms 
Which star the winds with points of 

colored light. 
As they rain thro' them, and bright 

golden globes 
Of fruit, suspended in their own green 

heaven. 
And thro' their veined leaves and amber 

stems 
The flowers whose purple and translucid 

bowls 
Stand ever mantling with aerial dew, 
The drink of spirits: and it circles 

round. 
Like the soft waving wings of noonday 

dreams, 
Inspiring calm and happy thoughts, like 

mine. 
Now thou art thus restored. This cave is 

thine. 
Arise ! Appear ! 

\^A Spirit rises in the likeness 
of a winged child. 

This is my torch-bearer; 
Who let his lamp out in old time with 

gazing 
On eyes from which he kindled it anew 
With love, which is as fire, sweet 

daughter mine. 
For such is that within thine own. Run, 

wayward, 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 



291 



And guide this company beyond the 

peak 
Of Bacchic Nysa, Maenad-haunted moun- 
tain, 
And beyond Indus and its tribute rivers, 
Trampling the torrent streams and glassy 

lakes 
With feet unwet, unwearied, undelaying, 
And up the green ravine, across the vale, 
* Beside the windless and crystalline pool, 
Wherever lies, on unerasing waves, 
The image of a temple, built above. 
Distinct with column, arch, and archi- 
trave. 
And palm-like capital, and over-wrought. 
And populous most with living imagery, 
Praxitelean shapes, whose marble smiles 
Fill the husht air with everlasting love. 
It is deserted now, but once it bore 
Thy name, Prometheus; there the 
emulous youths 
\ Bore to thy honor thro' the divine gloom 
' The lamp which was thine emblem; even 
as those 
Who bear the untransmitted torch of hope 
Into the grave, across the night of life, 
As thou hast borne it most triumphantly 
To this far goal of Time. Depart, fare- 
well. 
Beside that temple is the destined cave. 

SCENE IV. — A Forest. In the 
Background a Cave. Prome- 
theus, Asia, Panthea, Ione, ajid 
the Spirit of the Earth. 

lone. Sister, it is not earthly: how 

it glides 
Under the leaves ! how on its head 

there burns 
A light, like a green star, whose emerald 

beams 
Are twined with its fair hair! how, as 

it moves, 
The splendor drops in flakes upon the 

grass ! 
Knowest thou it? 

Panthea. It is the delicate spirit 

That guides the earth thro' heaven. 

From afar 
The populous constellations call that light 
The loveliest of the planets; and some- 
times 



It floats along the spray of the salt sea, 
Or makes its chariot of a foggy cloud, 
Or walks thro' fields or cities while 

men sleep. 
Or o'er the mountain tops, or down the 

rivers. 
Or thro' the green waste wilderness, as 

now, 
Wondering at all it sees. Before Jove 

reigned 
It loved our sister Asia, and it came 
Each leisure hour to drink the liquid light 
Out of her eyes, for which it said it 

thirsted 
As one bit by a dipsas, and with her 
It made its childish confidence, and told 

her 
All it had known or seen, for it saw 

much. 
Yet idly reasoned what it saw; and 

called her — 
For whence it sprung it knew not, nor 

do I — 
Mother, dear mother. 

Phe Spirit of the Earth (^rtintting to 

Asia). Mother, dearest mother; 
May I then talk with thee as I was 

wont? 
May I then hide my eyes in thy soft arms. 
After thy looks have made them tired of 

joy? 
May I then play beside thee the long 

noons, 
When work is none in the bright silent 

air? 
Asia. I love thee, gentlest being, 

and henceforth 
Can cherish thee unenvied: speak, I 

pray : 
Thy simple talk once solaced, now de- 
lights. 
Spirit of the Earth. Mother, I am 

grown wiser, tho' a child 
Cannot be wise like thee, within this day; 
And happier too; happier and wiser both. 
Thou knowest that toads, and snakes, 

and loathly worms. 
And venomous and malicious beasts, 

and boughs 
That bore ill berries in the woods, were 

ever 
An hindrance to my walks o'er the 

green world : 



292 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 



And that, among the haunts of human 

kind, 
Hard - featured men, or with proud, 

angry looks. 
Or cold, staid gait, or false and hollow 

smiles, 
Or the dull sneer of self-loved ignorance. 
Or other such foul masks, with which ill 

thoughts 
Hide that fair being whom we spirits 

call man; 
And women too, ugliest of all things 

evil, 
(Tho' fair, even in a world where thou 

art fair, 
When good and kind, free and sincere 

like thee ), 
When false or frowning made me sick at 

heart 
To pass them, tho' they slept, and I 

unseen. 
Well, my path lately lay thro' a great 

city 
Into the woody hills surrounding it: 
A sentinel was sleeping at the gate : 
When there was heard a sound, so loud 

it shook 
The towers amid the moonlight, yet more 

sweet 
Than any voice but thine, sweetest of 

all; 
A long, long sound, as it would never 

end: 
And all the inhabitants leapt suddenly 
Out of their rest, and gathered in the 

streets. 
Looking in wonder up to Heaven, while 

yet 
The music pealed along. I hid myself 
Within a fountain in the public square. 
Where I lay like the reflex of the moon 
Seen in a wave under green leaves; and 

soon 
Those ugly human shapes and visages 
Of which I spoke as having wrought me 

pain, 
Past floating thro' the air, and fading still 
Into the winds that scattered them; and 

those 
From whom they past seemed mild and 

lovely forms 
After some foul disguise had fallen, and 

all 



Were somewhat changed, and after brief 

surprise 
And greetings of delighted wonder, all 
Went to their sleep again : and when 

the dawn 
Came, would'st thou think that toads, 

and snakes, and efts, 
Could e'er be beautiful? yet so they 

were. 
And that with little change of shape or 

hue : 
All things had put their evil nature off: 
I cannot tell my joy, when o'er a lake 
Upon a drooping bough with night-shade 

twined, 
I saw two azure halcyons clinging down- 
ward 
And thinning one bright bunch of amber 

berries. 
With quick long beaks, and in the deep 

there lay 
Those lovely forms imaged as in a sky; 
So, with my thoughts full of these happy 

changes. 
We meet again, the happiest change of 

all. 
Asia. And never will we part, till 

thy chaste sister 
Who guides the frozen and inconstant 

moon 
Will look on thy more warm and equal 

light 
Till her heart thaw like flakes of April 

snow 
And love thee. 

Spirit of the Earth. What; as 

Asia loves Prometheus? 
Asia. Peace, wanton, thou art yet 

not old enough. 
Think ye by gazing on each other's 

eyes 
To multiply your lovely selves, and fill 
With sphered fires the interlunar air? 
Spirit of the Earth. Nay, mother, 

while my sister trims her lamp 
'T is hard I should go darkling. 

Asia. Listen; look! 

7'he Spirit of the Hour enters. 
ProvietJiens. We feel what thou hast 

heard and seen: yet speak. 
Spirit of the Hour. Soon as the 

sound had ceast whose thundei 

filled 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 



293 



The abysses of the sky and the wide 

earth, 
There was a change: the impalpable 

thin air 
And the all-circling sunlight were trans- 
formed, 
As if the sense of love dissolved in 

them 
Had folded itself round the sphered 

world. 
My vision then grew clear, and I could 

see 
Into the mysteries of the universe : 
Dizzy as with delight I floated down, 
Winnowing the lightsome air with lan- 

gviid plumes, 
My coursers sought their birthplace in 

the sun, 
Where they henceforth will live exempt 

from toil 
Pasturing flowers of vegetable fire; 
And where my moonlike car will stand 
) within 

A temple, gazed upon by Phidian forms 
Of thee, -and Asia, and the Earth, and 

me, 
And you fair nymphs looking the love 

we feel, — 
In memory of the tidings it has borne, — 
Beneath a dome fretted with graven 

flowers, 
Poised on twelve columns of resplendent 

stone, 
And open to the bright and liquid sky. 
Yoked to it by an amphisbaenic snake 
The likeness of those winged steeds will 

mock 
The flight from which they find repose. 

Alas, 
Whither has wandered now my partial 

tongue 
When all remains untold which ye would 

hear? 
As I have said I floated to the earth : 
It was, as it is still, the pain of bliss 
To move, to breathe, to be; I wander- 
ing went 
Among the haunts and dwellings of man- 
kind, 
A.nd first was disappointed not to see 
Such mighty change as I had felt within 
Exprest in outward things; but soon I 

lookt. 



And behold, thrones were kingless, and 

men walkt 
One with the other even as spirits do, 
None fawned, none trampled; hate, 

disdain, or fear, 
Self-love or self-contempt, on human 

brows, 
No more inscribed, as o'er the gate of 

hell, 
" All hope abandon ye who enter here; " 
None frowned, none trembled, none 

with eager fear 
Gazed on another's eye of cold command. 
Until the subject of the tyrant's will 
Became, worse fate, the abject of his 

own, 
Which spurred him, like an outspent 

horse, to death. 
None wrought his lips in truth-entan- 
gling lines 
Which smiled the lie his tongue dis- 
dained to speak; 
None, with firm sneer, trod out in his 

own heart 
The sparks of love and hope till there 

remained 
Those bitter ashes, a soul self-consumed, 
And the wretch crept a vampire among 

men. 
Infecting all with his own hideous ill; 
None talkt that common, false, cold, 

hollow talk 
Which makes the heart deny the yes it 

breathes. 
Yet question that unmeant hypocrisy 
With such a self-mistrust as has no name. 
And women, too, frank, beautiful, and 

kind 
As the free heaven which rains fresh 

light and dew 
On the wide earth, past; gentle radiant 

forms, 
From custom's evil taint exempt and 

pure ; 
Speaking the wisdom once they could 

not think, 
Looking emotions once they feared to 

feel. 
And changed to all which once they 

dared not be. 
Yet being now, made earth like heaven; 

nor pride, 
Nor jealousy, nor envy, nor ill shame, 



294 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 



The bitterest of those drops of treasured 

gall, 
Spoiled the sweet taste of the nepenthe, 

love. 

Thrones, altars, judgment - seats, and 
prisons; wherein. 

And beside which, by wretched men 
were borne 

Sceptres, tiaras, swords, and chains, and 
tomes 

Of reasoned wrong, glozed on by igno- 
rance, 

Were like those monstrous and barbaric 
shapes, 

The ghosts of a no more remembered 
fame. 

Which, from their unworn obelisks, look 
forth 

In triumph o'er the palaces and tombs 

Of those who were their conquerors: 
mouldering round 

Those imaged to the pride of kings and 
priests, 

A dark yet mighty faith, a power as 
wide 

As is the world it wasted, and are 
now 

But an astonishment; even so the tools 

And emblems of its last captivity, 

Amid the dwellings of the peopled 
earth. 

Stand, not o'erthrown, but unregarded 
now. 

And those foul shapes, abhorred by God 
and man. 

Which, under many a name and many a 
form 

Strange, savage, ghastly, dark and ex- 
ecrable, 

Were Jupiter, the tyrant of the world; 

And which the nations, panic-stricken, 
served 

With blood, and hearts broken by long 
hope, and love 

Dragged to his altars soiled and garland- 
less. 

And slain among men's unreclaiming 
tears, 

Flattering the thing they feared, which 
fear was hate, 

Frown, mouldering fast, o'er their aban- 
doned shrines : 



The painted veil, by those who were, 
called life, 

Which mimickt, as with colors idly 
spread, 

All men believed and hoped, is torn 
aside; 

The loathsome mask has fallen, the man 
remains 

Sceptreless, free, uncircumscribed, but 
man 

Equal, unclast, tribeless, and nation- 
less. 

Exempt from awe, worship, degree, the 
king 

Over himself; just, gentle, wise: but 
man 

Passionless; no, yet free from guilt or 
pain. 

Which were, for his will made or suffered 
them, 

Nor yet exempt, tho' ruling them like 
slaves, 

From chance, and death, and mutability, 

The clogs of that which else might over- 
soar 

The loftiest star of unascended heaven, 

Pinnacled dim in the intense inane. 

END OF THE THIRD ACT. 



ACT IV. 

Scene. — A Part of the Forest neab 
THE Cave of Prometheus. Pan- 
THEA and Ione are sleeping; they 
atvaken gradually during the first 
Song. 

Voice of unseen Spirits. 

The pale stars are gone ! 
For the sun, their swift shepherd. 
To their folds them compelling. 
In the depths of the dawn, 
Hastes, in meteor-eclipsing array, and 
they flee 
Beyond his blue dwelling, 
As fawns flee the leopard. 
But where are ye? 

A Train of dark Forms and Shadows 
passes by confusedly, singing. 
Here, oh, here : 
We bear the bier 



-^ 


PKOMETHEU 


S UNBOUND. 295 


1 


Of the Father of many a cancelled year ! 


The billows and fountains 




Spectres we 


Fresh music are flinging. 




Of the dead Hours be; 


Like the notes of a spirit from land and 




We bear Time to his tomb in eternity. 


from sea; 
The storms mock the mountains 




Strew, oh, strew 


With the thunder of gladness. 




Hair, not yew ! 


But where are ye? 




Wet the dusty pall with tears, not dew ! 






Be the faded flowers 


lone. What charioteers are these? 


► 


Of Death's bare bowers 


Panthea. Where are their 


Spread on the corpse of the King of 


chariots ? 




Hours ! 


Sei/iichortis of Hozirs. 
The voice of the Spirits of Air and of 




Haste, oh, haste ! 


Earth 




As shades are chased. 


Have drawn back the figured curtain 




Trembling, by day, from heaven's blue 


of sleep 




waste. 


Which covered our being and darkened 




We melt away, 


our birth 


^ 


Like dissolving spray, 


In the deep. 




From the children of a diviner day, 


A Voice. 




With the lullaby 


In the deep ? 




Of winds that die 


Semichortis IT. 


) 


On the bosom of their own harmony ! 


Oh, below the deep. 


lone. 


Semichorus I. 




What dark forms were they? 


An hundred ages we had been kept 




Pani/wa. 


Cradled in visions of hate and care, 




The past Hours weak and gray, 


And each one who waked as his brother 




With the spoil which their toil 


slept. 




Raked together 


Found the truth — 




From the conquest but One could foil. 


Semichoj'us II. 




lone. 


Worse than his visions were ! 




Have they past ? 


Semichorus I. 




Panthea. 


We have heard the lute of Hope in sleep; 




They have past; 


We have known the voice of Love in 




They outspeeded the blast, 


dreams, 




While 't is said, they are fled: 


We have felt the wand of Power, and 




Io)ic. 


leap — 




Whither, oh, whither? 


Semichorus 11. 




Panthea. 


As the billows leap in the morning 




To the dark, to the past, to the dead. 


beams ! / 

Chor-us. 




Voice of tinsee7i Spirits. 




Bright clouds float in heaven, 


Weave the dance on the floor of the 




Dew-stars gleam on earth. 


breeze, 




Waves assemble on ocean. 


Pierce with song heaven's silent light. 




They are gathered and driven 


Enchant the day that too swiftly flees. 




By the storm of delight, by the panic of 


To check its flight ere the cave of 




glee ! 


night. 




They shake with emotion. 






They dance in their mirth. 


Once the hungry Hours were hounds 




But where are ye ? 


Which chased the day like a bleeding 
deer. 
And it limpt and stumbled with many 




The pine boughs are singing 




Old songs with new gladness. 


wounds 



296 



PR OME THE US UNB O UND. 



Through the nightly dells of the desart 
year. 

But now, oh weave the mystic measure 
Of music, and dance, and shapes of 
light, 
Let the Hours, and the spirits of might 
and pleasure. 
Like the clouds and sunbeams, unite. 

A Voice. 

Unite ! 
Panthea. See, where the Spirits of 
the human mind 
Wrapt in sweet sounds, as in bright veils, 
approach. 

Chortis of Spirits. 

We join the throng 

Of the dance and the song, 
By the whirlwind of gladness borne 
along; 

As the flying-fish leap 

From the Indian deep. 
And mix with the sea-birds, half asleep. 

Chorus of Hours. 
Whence come ye, so wild and so fleet. 
For sandals of lightning are on your feet, 
And your wings are soft and swift as 

thought, 
And your eyes are as love which is 

veiled not? 

Chorus of Spirits. 
We come from the mind 
Of human kind 
Which was late so dusk, and obscene, 
and blind, 
Now 't is an ocean 
Of clear emotion, 
A heaven of serene and mighty motion; 

From that deep abyss 

Of wonder and bliss, 
Whose caverns are crystal palaces; 

From those skiey towers 

Where Thought's crowned powers 
Sit watching your dance, ye happy 
Hours ! 

From the dim recesses 
Of woven caresses, 



i 



Where lovers catch ye by your loose 
tresses; 
From the azure isles, 
Where sweet Wisdom smiles, 

Delaying your ships with her siren wiles. 

From the temples high 

Of Man's ear and eye, 
Rooft over Sculpture and Poesy; 

From the murmurings 

Of the unsealed springs 
Where Science bedews his daedal wings. 

Years after years, 
Through blood, and tears, 
And a thick hell of hatreds, and hopes, 
and fears; 
We waded and flew. 
And the islets were few 
Where the bud-blighted flowers of hap- 
piness grew. 

Our feet now, every palm, 

Are sandalled with calm. 
And the dew of our wings is a rain of 
balm; 

And, beyond our eyes. 

The human love lies 
Which makes all it gazes on Paradise. 

Chorus of Spirits and Hours. 

Then weave the web of the mystic 

measure; 
From the depths of the sky and the ends 

of the earth. 
Come, swift Spirits of might and of 

pleasure, 
Fill the dance and the music of mirth, 
As the waves of a thousand streams 

rush by 
To an ocean of splendor and harmony ! 

Chorus of Spirits. 

Our spoil is won. 

Our task is done, . 
We are free to dive, or soar, o>- run; 

Beyond and around. 

Or within the bound 
Which clips the world with darkness 
round. 

We '11 pass the eyes 
Of the starry skies 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 



297 



Into the hoar deep to colonize: 
Death, Chaos, and Night, 
From the sound of our flight, 

Shall flee, like mist from a tempest's 
might. 

And Earth, Air, and Light, 

And the Spirit of Might, 
Which drives round the stars in their 
fiery flight ; 

And Love, Thought, and Breath, 

The powers that quell Death, 
Wherever we soar shall assemble beneath. 

And our singing shall build 

In the void's loose field 
A world for the Spirit of Wisdom to wield ; 

We will take our plan 

From the new world of man. 
And our work shall be called the Pro- 
methean. 

S Chorus of Hours. 

Break the dance, and scatter the song; 
Let some depart, and some remain. 

Semi chorus I. 
We, beyond heaven, are driven along: 

Semi chorus IT. 
Us the enchantments of earth retain : 

Setnichorus I. 

Ceaseless, and rapid, and fierce, and free, 
With the Spirits which build a new earth 

and sea, 
And a heaven where yet heaven could 

never be. 

Semi chorus II. 

Solemn, and slow, and serene, and bright, 
Leading the Day and outspeeding the 

Night, 
With the powers of a world of perfect 

light. 

Semichorus I, 
We whirl, singing loud, round the gather- 
) ing sphere, 

Till the trees, and the beasts, and the 
clouds appear 
' From its chaos made calm by love, not fear. 



Semichortcs II. 

We encircle the ocean and mountains of 

earth, 
And the happy forms of its death and birth 
Change to the music of our sweet 

mirth. 

Chorus of Hours and Spirits. 
Break the dance, and scatter the song, 
Let some depart, and some remain. 
Wherever we fly we lead along 
In leashes, like starbeams, soft yet 
strong. 
The clouds that are heavy with love's 

sweet rain. 
Panthea. Ha ! they are gone ! 
lone. Yet feel you no delight 

From the past sweetness? 

Panthea. As the bare green hill 

When some soft cloud vanishes into rain, 
Laughs with a thousand drops of sunny 

water 
To the unpavilioned sky ! 

lone. Even whilst we speak 

New notes arise. What is that awful 

sound? 

Panthea. 'T is the deep music of the 

rolling world 

Kindling within the strings of the waved 

air, 
iEolian modulations. 

lone. Listen too. 

How every pause is filled with under- 

notes, 
Clear, silver, icy, keen, awakening tones. 
Which pierce the sense, and live within 

the soul. 
As the sharp stars pierce winter's crystal 

air 
And gaze upon themselves within the 
sea. 
Panthea. But see where thro' two 
openings in the forest 
Which hanging branches overcanopy, 
And where two runnels of a rivulet. 
Between the close moss violet-inwoven. 
Have made their path of melody, like 

sisters 
Who part with sighs that they may meet 

in smiles, 
Turning their dear disunion to an i^le 
Of lovely grief, a wood of sweet sad 
thoughts; 



298 



PR OME THE US UNB O UND. 



Two visions of strange radiance float 

upon 
The ocean-like enchantment of strong 

solind, 
Which flows intenser, keener, deeper yet 
Under the ground and thro' the wind- 
less air. 
lone. I see a chariot like that thinnest 

boat, 
In which the mother of the months is 

borne 
By ebbing night into her western cave, 
When she upsprings from interlunar 

dreams, 
O'er which is curved an orblike canopy 
Of gentle darkness, and the hills and 

woods 
Distinctly seen through that dusk airy 

veil, 
Regard like shapes in an enchanter's 

glass; 
Its wheels are solid clouds, azure and 

gold. 
Such as the genii of the thunderstorm 
Pile on the floor of the illumined sea 
When the sun rushes under it; they roll 
And move and grow as with an inward 

wind; 
Within it sits a winged infant, white 
Its countenance, like the whiteness of 

bright snow, 
Its plumes are as feathers of sunny 

frost. 
Its limbs gleam white, through the wind- 
flowing folds 
Of its white robe, woof of ethereal pearl. 
Its hair is white, the brightness of white 

light 
Scattered in strings; yet its two eyes are 

heavens 
Of liquid darkness, which the Deity 
Within seems pouring, as a storm is 

poured 
From jagged clouds, out of their arrowy 

lashes. 
Tempering the cold and radiant air 

around, 
With fire that is not brightness; in its 

hand 
It sways a quivering moonbeam, from 

whose point 
A guiding power directs the chariot's 

prow 



Over its wheeled clouds, which as thev 

roll 
Over the grass, and flowers, and waves, 

wake sounds. 
Sweet as a singing rain of silver dew. 
Fanthea. And from the other open- 
ing in the wood 
Rushes, with loud and whirlwind har- 
mony, 
A sphere, which is as many thousand 

spheres. 
Solid as crystal, yet through all its mass 
Flow, as through empty space, music and 

light: . 

Ten thousand orbs involving and in- 
volved. 
Purple and azure, white, and green, and 

golden. 
Sphere within sphere; and every space 

between 
Peopled with unimaginable shapes, 
Such as ghosts dream dwell in the lamp- 
less deep. 
Yet each inter-transpicuous, and they 

whirl 
Over each other with a thousand motions. 
Upon a thousand sightless axles spinning. 
And with the force of self-destroying 

swiftness. 
Intensely, slowly, solemnly roll on, 
Kindling with mingled sounds, and many 

tones, 
Intelligible words and music wild. 
With mighty whirl the multitudinous orb 
Grinds the bright brook into an azure 

mist 
Of elemental subtlety, like light; 
And the wild odor of the forest flowers, 
The music of the living grass and air. 
The emerald light of leaf -entangled beams 
Round its intense yet self-conflicting 

speed, 
Seem kneaded into one aerial mass 
Which drowns the sense. Within the 

orb itself. 
Pillowed upon its alabaster arms. 
Like to a child o'erwearied with sweet 

toil, 
On its own folded wings, and wavy 

hair. 
The Spirit of the Earth is laid asleep. 
And you can see its little lips are mov- 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 



299 



^ Amid the changing light of their own- 

smiles, 
Like one who talks of what he loves in 

dream. 
lone. 'T is only mocking the orb's 

harmony. 
Panthea. And from a star upon its 

forehead, shoot. 
Like swords of azure fire, or golden 
> spears 

With tyrant-quelling myrtle overtwined, 
Embleming heaven and earth united 

now. 
Vast beams like spokes of some invisible 

wheel 
Which whirl as the orb whirls, swifter 

than thought. 
Filling the abyss with sun-like lightnings. 
And perpendicular now, and now trans- 
verse, 
Pierce the dark soil, and as they pierce 
. and pass, 

/ Make bare the secrets of the earth's deep 

heart; 
Infinite mine of adamant and gold, 
Valueless stones, and unimagined gems. 
And caverns on crystalline columns 

poised 
With vegetable silver overspread; 
Wells of unfathomed fire, and water 

springs 
Whence the great sea, even as a child is 

fed, 
Whose vapors clothe earth's monarch 

mountain-tops 
With kingly, ermine snow. The beams 

flash on 
And make appear the melancholy ruins 
Of cancelled cycles; anchors, beaks of 

ships; 
Planks turned to marble; quivers, 

helms, and spears, 
And gorgon-headed targes, and the 

wheels 
Of scythed chariots, and the emblazonry 
Of trophies, standards, and armorial 

beasts, 
Round which death laught, sepulchred 

emblems 
Of dead destruction, ruin within ruin ! 
The wrecks beside of many a city vast. 
Whose population which the earth grew 

over 



Was mortal, but not human; see, they 

lie. 
Their monstrous works, and uncouth 

skeletons. 
Their statues, homes and fanes; pro- 
digious shapes 
Huddled in gray annihilation, split, 
Jammed in the hard, black deep; and 

over these. 
The anatomies of unknown winged 

things. 
And fishes which were isles of living 

scale. 
And serpents, bony chains, twisted 

around 
The iron crags, or within heaps of dust 
To which the tortuous strength of their 

last pangs 
Had crusht the iron crags; and over 

these 
The jagged alligator, and the might 
Of earth-convulsing behemoth, which 

once 
Were monarch beasts, and on the slimy 

shores, 
And weed-overgrown continents of earth, 
Increased and multiplied like summer 

worms 
On an abandoned corpse, till the blue 

globe 
V>^rapt deluge round it like a cloke, and 

they 
Yelled, gaspt, and were abolisht; or 

some God 
Whose throne was in a comet, past, and 

cried. 
Be not ! And like my words they were 

no more. 

The Ea7'th. 
The joy, the triumph, the delight, the 

madness ! 
The boundless, overflowing, bursting 

gladness. 
The vaporous exultation not to be con- 
fined ! 
Ha ! ha ! the animation of delight 
Which wraps me, like an atmosphere 

of light, 
And bears me as a cloud is borne by its 

own wind. 

The Moon. 
Brother mine, calm wanderer, 
Happy globe of land and air, 



300 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 



Some Spirit is darted like a beam from 
thee, 
Which penetrates my frozen frame, 
And passes with the warmth of flame, 
With love, and odor, and deep melody 
Thro' me, thro' me ! 

The Earth. 

Ha ! ha ! the caverns of my hollow 
mountaiiis, 

My cloven fire-crags, sound-exulting 
fountains 
Laugh with a vast and inextinguishable 
laughter. 

The oceans, and the deserts, and the 
abysses. 

And the deep air's unmeasured wil- 
dernesses. 
Answer from all their clouds and billows, 
echoing after. 

They cry aloud as I do. Sceptred 
curse, 

Who all our green and azure universe 
Threatenedst to muffle round with black 
destruction, sending 

A solid cloud to rain hot thunder- 
stones. 

And splinter and knead down my 
children's bones, 
All I bring forth, to one void mass bat- 
tering and blending. 

Until each crag-like tower, and storied 

column. 
Palace, and obelisk, and temple 

solemn. 
My imperial mountains crowned with 

cloud, and snow, and fire; 
My sea-like forests, every blade and 

blossom 
Which finds a grave or cradle in my 

bosom. 
Were stampt by thy strong hate into a 

lifeless mire. 

How art thou sunk, withdrawn, cov- 
ered, drunk up 

By thirsty nothing, as the brackish 
cup 
Drained by a desert-troop, a little drop 
for all; 



And from beneath, around, within, 

above, 
Filling thy void annihilation, love 
Burst in like light on caves cloven by 

the thunder-ball. 

The Moon. 

The snow upon my lifeless mountains 
Is loosened into living fountains. 
My solid oceans flow, and sing, and 
shine: 
A spirit from my heart bursts forth. 
It clothes with unexpected birth 
My cold bare bosom : Oh ! it must be 
thine 

On mine, on mine ! 

Gazing on thee I feel, I know 
Green stalks burst forth, and bright 
flowers grow. 
And living shapes upon my bosom move : 
Music is in the sea and air, I 

Winged clouds soar here and there, 
Dark with the rain new buds are dream- 
ing of : 

'T is love, all love ! 

The Earth. 

It interpenetrates my granite mass, 
Through tangled roots and trodden 

clay doth pass, 
Into the utmost leaves and delicatest 

flowers; ^ 

Upon the winds, among the clouds 

't is spread, 
It wakes a life in the forgotten dead. 
They breathe a spirit up from their , 

obscurest bowers. 

And like a storm bursting its cloudy 

prison 
With thunder, and with whirlwind, 

has arisen 
Out of the lampless caves of unimagined 

being : 
With earthquake shock and swiftness 

making shiver 
Thought's stagnant chaos, unremoved 

for ever. 
Till hate, and fear, and pain, light-van- 

quisht shadows, fleeing, 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 



301 



Leave Man, who was a many-sided 

mirror, 
Which could distort to many a shape 
of error. 
This true fair world of things, a sea re- 
flecting love; 
Which over all his kind as the sun's 
heaven 
Gliding o'er ocean, smooth, serene, 
and even 
Darting from starry depths radiance and 
life, doth move, 

Leave Man, even as a leprous child 

is left, 
Who follows a sick beast to some 
warm cleft 
Of rocks, through which the might of 
healing springs is poured; 
Then when it wanders home with rosy 
smile, 
'x Unconscious, and its mother fears 
* awhile 

It is a spirit, then, weeps on her child 
restored. 

Man, oh, not men ! a chain of linked 
thought. 

Of love and might to be divided not. 
Compelling the elements with adaman- 
tine stress; 

As the sun rules, even with a tyrant's 
gaze. 

The unquiet republic of the maze 
Of planets, struggling fierce towards 
heaven's free wilderness. 

Man, one harmonious soul of many a 

soul, 
Whose nature is its own divine con- 
trol, 
Where all things flow to all, as rivers to 
the sea; 
Familiar acts are beautiful through love; 
Labor, and pain, and grief, in life's 
green grove 
Sport like tame beasts; none knew how 
gentle they could be ! 

His will, with all mean passions, bad 
delights, 
I And selfish cares, its trembling 

satellites, 



A spirit ill to guide, but mighty to obey. 
Is as a tempest-winged ship, whose 

helm 
Love rules, through waves which dare 
not overwhelm. 
Forcing life's wildest shores to own its 
sovereign sway. 

All things confess his strength. 
Through the cold mass 

Of marble and of color his dreams 
pass; 
Bright threads whence mothers weave 
the robes their children wear; 

Language is a perpetual orphic song, 

Which rules with daedal harmony a 
throng 
Of thoughts and forms, which else sense- 
less and shapeless were. 

The lightning is his slave; heaven's 
utmost deep 

Gives up her stars, and like a flock of 
sheep 
They pass before his eye, are numbered, 
and roll on ! 

The tempest is his steed, he strides 
the air; 

And the abyss shouts from her depth 
laid bare, 
Heaven, hast thou secrets? Man un- 
veils me; I have none. 

The Moon. 

The shadow of white death has past 
From my path in heaven at last, 
A clinging shroud of solid frost and 
sleep; 
And through my newly-woven bowers, 
Wander happy paramours. 
Less mighty, but as mild as those who 
keep 

Thy vales more deep. 

The Earth. 

As the dissolving warmth of dawn 

jpay fold 
A half unfrozen dew-globe, green, 

and gold, 
And crystalline, till it becomes a winged 

mist, 



302 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 



And wanders up the vault of the blue 

day, 
Outlives the noon, and on the sun's 

last ray 
Hangs o'er the sea, a fleece of fire and 

amethyst. 

The Moon. 

Thou art folded, thou art lying 
In the light which is undying 
Of thine own joy, and heaven's smile 
divine; 
All suns and constellations shower 
On thee a light, a life, a power 
Which doth array thy sphere; thou pour- 
est thine 

On mine, on mine ! 

The Earth. 
I spin beneath my pyramid of night. 
Which points into the heavens dream- 
ing delight. 
Murmuring victorious joy in my enchanted 
sleep; 
As a youth lulled in love-dreams 

faintly sighing, 
Under the shadow of his beauty lying. 
Which round his rest a watch of light and 
warmth doth keep. 

The Moon. 

As in the soft and sweet eclipse. 
When soul meets soul on lovers' lips, 
High hearts are calm, and brightest eyes 
are dull; 
So when thy shadow falls on me. 
Then am I mute and still, by thee 
Covered; of thy love. Orb most beau- 
tiful, 

Full, oh, too full ! 

Thou art speeding round the sun 
Brightest world of many a one; 
Green and azure sphere which shinest 
With a light which is divinest 
Among all the lamps of Heaven 
To whom life and light is given; 
I, thy crystal paramour 
Borne beside thee by a power ^ 
Like the polar Paradise, 
Magnet-like of lovers' eyes; 
I, a most enamoured maiden 
Whose weak brain is overladen 



With the pleasure of her love, 
Maniac-like around thee move 
Gazing, an insatiate bride. 
On thy form from every side 
Like a Maenad, round the cup 
Which Agave lifted up 
In the weird Cadmean forest. 
Brother, wheresoe'er thou soarest 
I must hurry, whirl and follow 
Thro' the heavens wide and hollow, 
Sheltered by the warm embrace 
Of thy soul from hungry space. 
Drinking from thy sense and sight 
Beauty, majesty, and might. 
As a lover or chameleon 
Grows like what it looks upon, 
As a violet's gentle eye 
Gazes on the azure sky 
Until its hue grows like what it beholds, 
As a gray and watery mist 
Glows like solid amethyst 
Athwart the western mountain it enfolds. 
When the sunset sleeps -J 

Upon its snow. 

The Earth. 
And the weak day weeps 
That it should be so. 
O gentle Moon, the voice of thy de- 
light 
Falls on me like thy clear and tender 

. light 
Soothing the seaman, borne the summer 
night. 
Thro' isles for ever calm; 
O gentle Moon, thy crystal accents • 

pierce 
The caverns of my pride's deep universe, 
Charming the tiger joy, whose tramp- 
lings fierce < 
Made wounds which need thy balm. 
Panthea. I rise as from a bath of 
sparkling water, 
A bath of azure light, among dark rocks, 
Out of the stream of sound. 

lone. Ah me ! sweet sister, 

The stream of sound has ebbed away 

from us. 
And you pretend to rise out of its ' 

wave, 
Because your words fall like the clear, 

soft dew 
Shaken from a bathing wood-nymph's 
limbs and hair. 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 



303 



Panthea. Peace ! peace ! A mighty 
Power, which is as darkness, 
Is rising out of Earth, and from the sky 
Is showered like night, and from within 

the air 
Bursts, like eclipse which had been gath- 
ered up 
Into the pores of sunlight: the bright 

visions. 
Wherein the singing spirits rode and 

shone. 
Gleam like pale meteors thro' a watery 
night. 
lone. There is a sense of words upon 

mine ear. 
Panthea. An universal sound like 
words: Oh, list ! 

Donogorgon. 
Thou, Earth, calm empire of a happy soul. 
Sphere of divinest shapes and harmo- 
nies, 
J Beautiful orb ! gathering as thou dost roll 
' The love which paves thy path along 
the skies : 

The Earth. 
I hear : I am as a drop of dew that dies. 
De?nogorgon. 
Thou, Moon, which gazest on the nightly 
Earth 
With wonder, as it gazes upon thee; 
Whilst each to men, and beasts, and the 
swift birth 
Of birds, is beauty, love, calm, har- 
mony : 

The Moon. 
I hear : I am a leaf shaken by thee ! 
Deniogorgon. 
Ye kings of suns and stars. Daemons and 
Gods, 
Ethereal Dominations, who possess 
Elysian, windless, fortunate abodes 
Beyond Heaven's constellated wilder- 
ness: 

A Voice from above. 
Our great Republic hears, we are blest, 
and bless. 

Deinogorgon. 
Ve happy dead, whom beams of bright- 
est verse 
Are clouds to hide, not colors to por- 
tray, 
Whether your nature is that universe 
Which once ye saw and suffered — 



A Voice from beneath. 

Or as they 
Whom we have left, we change and 
pass away. 

DcDiogorgon. 
Ye elemental Genii, who have homes 
From man's high mind even to the 
central stone 
Of sullen lead; from Heaven's star-fretted 
domes 
To the dull weed some sea-worm bat- 
tens on : 

A confused Voice. 
We hear ! thy words waken Oblivion. 
Demogorgon. 
Spirits, whose homes are flesh; ye beasts 
and birds, 
Ye worms, and fish; ye living leaves 
and buds; 
Lightning and wind; and ye untamable 
herds. 
Meteors and mists, which throng air's 
solitudes: — 

A Voice. 
Thy voice to us is wind among still 
woods. 

Dei7iogorgon. 
Man, who wert once a despot and a 
slave; 
A dupe and a deceiver; a decay; 
A traveller from the cradle to the grave 
Thro' the dim night of this immor- 
tal day : 

All. 
Speak : thy strong words may never 
pass away. 

Defjiogorgon. 
This is the day, which down the void 

abysm 
At the Earth-born's spell yawns for 
Heaven's despotism. 
And Conquest is dragged captive 
through the deep: 
Love, from its awful throne of patient 

power 
In the wise heart, from the last giddy 
hour 
Of dead endurance, from the shppery, 
steep, 
And narrow verge of crag-like agony, 

springs 
And folds over the world its healing 
wings. 



304 



NOTE ON PROMETHEUS UNBOUND, 



Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, and Endur- 
ance, 
These are the seals of that most firm 
assurance 
Which bars the pit over Destruction's 
strength; 
And if, with infirm hand. Eternity, 
MotTier of many acts and hours, should 
free 
The serpent that would clasp her with 
his length; 
These are the spells by which to reassume 
An empire o'er the disentangled doom. 

To suffer woes which Hope thinks in- 
finite; 

To forgive wrongs darker than death or 
night; 
To defy Power, which seems omnipo- 
tent; 

To love, and bear; to hope till Hope 
creates 

From its own wreck the thing it contem- 
plates; 
Neither to change, nor falter, nor re- 
pent; 

This, like thy glory. Titan, is to be 

Good, great and joyous, beautiful and 
free; 

This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and 
Victory. 



NOTE ON PROMETHEUS UN- 
BOUND, BY MRS. SHELLEY. 

On the 12th of March 1818 Shelley 
quitted England, never to return. His 
principal motive was the hope that his 
health would be improved by a milder 
climate; he suffered very much during 
the winter previous to his emigration, 
and this decided his vacillating purpose. 
In December 181 7 he had written from 
Marlow to a friend, saying : 

" My health has been materially worse. 
My feelings at intervals are of a deadly 
and torpid kind or awakened to such a state 
of unnatural and keen excitement that, 
only to instance the organ of sight, I find 
the very blades of grass and the boughs 
of distant trees present themselves to me 
with microscopic distinctness. Towards 



evening I sink into a state of lethargy 
and inanimation, and often remain for 
hours on the sofa between sleep and 
waking, a prey to the most painful irrita- 
bility of thought. Such, with little inter- 
mission, is my condition. The hours de- 
voted to study are selected with vigilant 
caution from among these periods of en- 
durance. It is not for this that I think 
of travelling to Italy, even if I knew that 
Italy would relieve me. But I have ex- 
perienced a decisive pulmonary attack; 
and although at present it has passed 
away without any considerable vestige of 
its existence, yet this symptom sufficiently 
shows the true nature of my disease to be 
consumptive. It is to my advantage that 
this malady is in its nature slow, and, if 
one is sufficiently alive to its advances, is 
susceptible of cure from a warm climate. 
In the event of its assuming any decided 
shape, it zvonld be my duty to go to Italy 
without delay. It is not mere health, 
but life, that I should seek, and that not 
for my own sake — I feel I am capable 
of trampling on all such weakness; but 
for the sake of those to whom my life 
may be a source of happiness, utility, se- 
curity, and honor, and to some of whom 
my death might be all that is the reverse. ' ' 

In almost every respect his journey to 
Italy was advantageous. He left behind 
friends to whom he was attached; but 
cares of a thousand kinds, many spring- 
ing from his lavish generosity, crowded 
round him in his native country, and, ex- 
cept the society of one or two friends, 
he had no compensation. The climate 
caused him to consume half his existence 
in helpless suffering. His dearest pleas- 
ure, the free enjoyment of the scenes of 
Nature, was marred by the same circum- 
stance. 

He went direct to Italy, avoiding even 
Paris, and did not make any pause till he 
arrived at Milan. The first aspect of 
Italy enchanted Shelley; it seemed a gar- 
den of delight placed beneath a clearer 
and brighter heaven than any he had lived 
under before. He wrote long descriptive 
letters during the first year of his resi- 
dence in Italy, which, as compositions, are 
the most beautiful in the world, and show 



NOTE ON PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 



305 



how truly he appreciated and studied the 
wonders of Nature and Art in that divine 
land. 

The poetical spirit within him speedily 
revived with all the power and with more 
than all the beauty of his first attempts. 
He meditated three subjects as the ground- 
work for lyrical dramas. One was the 
story of Tasso; of this a slight fragment 
of a song of Tasso remains. The other was 
one founded on the ' * Book of Job, ' ' which 
he never abandoned in idea, but of which 
no trace remains among his papers. The 
third was the "Prometheus Unbound." 
The Greek tragedians were now his most 
familiar companions in his wanderings, 
and the sublime majesty of ^schylus filled 
him with wonder and delight. The father 
of Greek tragedy does not possess the 
pathos of Sophocles, nor the variety and 
tenderness of Euripides; the interest on 
which he founds his dramas is often ele- 
vated above human vicissitudes into the 
mighty passions and throes of gods and 
demi-gods: such fascinated the abstract 
imagination of Shelley. 

We spent a month at Milan, visiting 
the Lake of Como during that interval. 
Thence we passed in succession to Pisa, 
Leghorn, the Baths of Lucca, Venice, 
Este, Rome, Naples, and back again to 
Rome, whither we returned early in March 
1819. During all this time Shelley medi- 
tated the subject of his drama, and wrote 
portions of it. Other poems were com- 
posed during this interval, and while at 
the Bagni di Lucca he translated Plato's 
SytJiposium. But, though he diversified 
his studies, his thoughts centred in the 
Prometheus. At last, when at Rome, 
during a bright and beautiful Spring, he 
gave up his whole time to the composition. 
The spot selected for his study was, as he 
mentions in his preface, the mountainous 
ruins of the Baths of Caracalla. These 
are little known to the ordinary visitor at 
Rome. He describes them in a letter, 
with that poetry and delicacy and truth 
of description which render his narrated 
impressions of scenery of unequalled 
beauty and interest. 

At first he completed the drama in three 
acts. It was not till several months after, 



when at Florence, that he conceived that 
a fourth act, a sort of hymn of rejoicing 
in the fulfilment of the prophecies with 
regard to Prometheus, ought to be added 
to complete the composition. 

The prominent feature of Shelley's 
theory of the destiny of the human species 
was that evil is not inherent in the system 
of the creation, but an accident that might 
be expelled. This also forms a portion 
of Christianity : God made earth and 
man perfect, till he, by his fall, 

" Brought death into the world and all our woe." 

Shelley believed that mankind had only 
to will that there should be no evil, and 
there would be none. It is not my part 
in these Notes to notice the arguments 
that have been urged against this opinion, 
but to mention the fact that he entertained 
it, and was indeed attached to it with fer- 
vent enthusiasm. That man could be so 
perfectionized as to be able to expel evil 
from his own nature, and from the greater 
part of the creation, was the cardinal 
point of his system. And the subject he 
loved best to dwell on was the image of 
One warring with the Evil Principle, op- 
pressed not only by it, but by all — even 
the good, who were deluded into consid- 
ering evil a necessary portion of human- 
ity; a victim full of fortitude and hope 
and the spirit of triumph, emanating from 
a reliance in the ultimate omnipotence of 
Good. Such he had depicted in his last 
poem, when he made Laon the enemy 
and the victim of tyrants. He now took a 
more idealized image of the same subject. 
He followed certain classical authorities 
in figuring Saturn as the good principle, 
Jupiter the usurping evil one, and Pro- 
metheus as the regenerator, who, unable 
to bring mankind back to primitive inno- 
cence, used knowledge as a weapon to 
defeat evil, by leading mankind, beyond 
the state wherein they are sinless through 
ignorance, to that in which they are vir- 
tuous through wisdom. Jupiter punished 
the temerity ol the Titan by chaining him 
to a rock of Caucasus, and causing a 
vulture to devour his still-renewed heart. 
There was a prophecy afloat in heaven 



3o6 



NOTE ON PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 



portending the fall of Jove, the secret of 
averting which was known only to Prome- 
theus; and the god offered freedom from 
torture on condition of its being commu- 
nicated to him. According to the myth- 
ological story, this referred to the offspring 
of Thetis, who was destined to be greater 
than his father. Prometheus at last bought 
pardon for his crime of enriching man- 
kind with his gifts, by revealing the proph- 
ecy. Hercules killed the vulture, and set 
him free; and Thetis was married to Pe- 
leus, the father of Achilles. 

Shelley adapted the catastrophe of this 
story to his peculiar views. The son 
greater than his father, born of the nup- 
tials of Jupiter and Thetis, was to dethrone 
Evil, and bring back a happier reign than 
that of Saturn. Prometheus defies the 
power of his enemy, and endures centu- 
ries of torture; till the hour arrives when 
Jove, blind to the real event, but darkly 
guessing that some great good to him- 
self will flow, espouses Thetis. At the 
moment, the Primal Power of the world 
drives him from his usurped throne, and 
Strength, in the person of Hercules, 
liberates Humanity, typified in Prome- 
theus, from the tortures generated by 
evil done or suffered. Asia, one of the 
Oceanides, is the wife of Prometheus — 
she was, according to other mythological 
interpretations, the same as Venus and 
Nature. When the benefactor of man- 
kind is liberated. Nature resumes the 
beauty of her prime, and is united to her 
husband, the emblem of the human race, 
in perfect and happy union. In the 
fourth Act, the Poet gives further scope 
to his imagination, and idealizes the 
forms of creation — such as we know 
them, instead of such as they appeared 
to the Greeks. Maternal Earth, the 
mighty parent, is superseded by the 
Spirit of the Earth, the guide of our 
planet through the realms of sky; while 
his fair and weaker companion and at- 
tendant, the Spirit of the Moon, receives 
bliss from the annihilation of Evil in the 
superior sphere. 

Shelley develops more particularly in 
the lyrics of this drama his abstruse and 
imaginative theories with regard to the 



creation. It requires a mind as subtle and 
penetrating as his own to understand the 
mystic meanings scattered throughout the 
poem. They elude the ordinary reader 
by their abstraction and delicacy of dis- 
tinction, but they are far from vague. It 
was his design to write prose metaphysical 
essays on the nature of Man, which would 
have served to explain much of what is 
obscure in his poetry; a few scattered 
fragments of observations and remarks, 
alone remain. He considered these 
philosophical views of Mind and Nature 
to be instinct with the intensest spirit of 
poetry. 

More popular poets clothe the ideal 
with familiar and sensible imagery. Shel- 
ley loved to idealize the real — to gift the 
mechanism of the material universe with 
a soul and a voice, and to bestow such 
also on the most delicate and abstract 
emotions and thoughts of the mind. i 
Sophocles was his great master in this ' 
species of imagery. 

I find in one of his manuscript books 
some remarks on a line in the " CEdipus 
Tyrannus," which show at once the criti- 
cal subtlety of Shelley's mind, and ex- 
plain his apprehension of those " minute 
and remote distinctions of feeling, whether 
relative to external nature or the living 
beings which surround us," which he 
pronounces, in the letter quoted in the 
note to the " Revolt of Islam," to com- 
prehend all that is sublime in man. 

" In the Greek Shakespeare, Sopho- 
cles, we find the image, 

lIoAAd? 6' 66oi<9 kkQovTo. ^(tovriho<i ■nko.voi'; : 

a line of almost unfathomable depth of 
poetry; yet how simple are the images 
in which it is arrayed ! 

' Coming to many ways in the wanderings of 
careful thought.' 

If the words hhov% and TrAivois had not been 
used, the line might have been ex- ^ 
plained in a metaphorical instead of an , 
absolute sense, as we say ' ways and 
means,' and 'wanderings' for error and 
confusion. But they meant literally paths 
or roads, such as we tread with our feet; 



NOTE ON PKOMETHEUS UNBOUND. 



\ol 



and wanderings, such as a man makes 
when he loses himself in a desert, or 
roams from city to city — as QLdipus, the 
speaker of this verse, was destined to 
wander, blind and asking charity. What 
a picture does this line suggest of the 
mind as a wilderness of intricate paths, 
wide as the universe, which is here made 
its symbol ; a world within a world which 
he who seeks some knowledge with re- 
spect to what he ought to do searches 
throughout, as he would search the ex- 
ternal universe for some valued thing 
which was hidden from him upon its 
surface." 

In reading Shelley's poetry, we often 
find similar verses, resembling, but not 
imitating, the Greek in this species of 
imagery; for, though he adopted the 
style, he gifted it with that originality 
of form and coloring which sprung from 
his own genius. 

In the "Prometheus Unbound," Shel- 
ley fulfils the promise quoted from a letter 
in the Note on the " Revolt of Islam." ^ 
The tone of the composition is calmer and 
more majestic; the poetry, more perfect as 
a whole; and the imagination displayed, 
at once more pleasingly beautiful and 
more varied and daring. The description 
of the Hours, as they are seen in the cave 
of Demogorgon, is an instance of this — 
it fills the mind as the most charming 
picture — we long to see an artist at work 
to bring to our view the 

" cars drawn by rainbow-winged steeds 
Which trample the dim winds ; in each there 

stands 
A wild-eyed charioteer urging their flight. 
Some look behind, as fiends pursued them there, 



^ While correcting the proof-sheets of that 
poem, it struck me that the poet had indulged in 
an exaggerated view of the evils of restored des- 
potism; which, however injurious and degrading, 
were less openly sanguinaiy than the triumph of 
anarchy, such as it appeared in France at the 
close of the last century. But at this time a 
book, " Scenes of Spanish Life," translated by 
Lieutenant Crawford from the German of Dr. 
Huber, of Rostock, fell into my hands. The 
account of the triumph of the nriests and the 
serviles, after the French invasion of Spain in 
182,^, bears a strong and frightful resemblance to 
som':^ < f the descriptions of the massacre of the 
patrioib in the " Revolt of Islam." 



And yet I see no shapes but the keen stars : 
Others, with burning eyes, lean forth, and drink 
With eager lips the wind of their own speed, 
As if the thing they loved fled on before. 
And now, even now, they claspt it. Their bright 

locks 
Stream like a comet's flashing hair ; they all 
Sweep onward." 

Through the whole poem there reigns 
a sort of calm and holy spirit of love; it 
soothes the tortured, and is hope to the 
expectant, till the prophecy is fulfilled, 
and Love, untainted by any evil, becomes 
the law of the world. 

England had been rendered a painful 
residence to Shelley, as much by the sort 
of persecution with which in those days all 
men of liberal opinions were visited, and 
by the injustice he had lately endured in 
the Court of Chancery, as by the symp- 
toms of disease which made him regard 
a visit to Italy as necessary to prolong 
his life. An exile, and strongly im- 
pressed with the feeling that the majority 
of his countrymen regarded him with 
sentiments of aversion such as his own 
heart could experience tow^ards none, he 
sheltered himself from such disgusting 
and painful thoughts in the calm retreats 
of poetry, and built up a world of his 
own — with the more pleasure, since he 
hoped to induce some one or two to 
believe that the earth might become 
such, did mankind themselves consent. 
The charm of the Roman climate helped 
to clothe his thoughts in greater beauty 
than they had ever worn before. And, 
as he wandered among the ruins made 
one with Nature in their decay, or gazed 
on the Praxitelean shapes that throng the 
Vatican, the Capitol, and the palaces of 
Rome, his soul imbibed forms of love- 
liness which became a portion of itself. 
There are many passages in the " Prome- 
theus," which show the intense delight 
he received from such studies, and give 
back the impression with a beauty of 
poetical description peculiarly his own. 
He felt this, as a poet must feel when he 
satisfies himself by the result of his 
labors; and he wrote from Rome, "My 
' Prometheus Unbound ' is just finished, 
and in a month or two I shall send it. It 
is a drama, with characters and mechan- 



3o8 



THE CENCI. 



ism of a kind yet unattempted; and I 
think the execution is better than any of 
my former attempts." 

I may mention, for the information of 
the more critical reader, that the verbal 
alterations in this edition of "Prome- 
theus" are made from a list of errata 
written by Shelley himself. 



THE CENCI: 

A TRAGEDY IN FIVE ACTS. 

DEDICATION. 

TO 
LEIGH HUNT, Esq. 

My dear Friend — I inscribe with your 
name, from a distant country, and after 
an absence whose months have seemed 
years, this the latest of my literary efforts. 

Those writings which I have hitherto 
published, have been little else than vis- 
ions which impersonate my own appre- 
hensions of the beautiful and the just. I 
can also perceive in them the literary de- 
fects incidental to youth and impatience; 
they are dreams of what ought to be, or 
may be. The drama which I now pre- 
sent to you is a sad reality. I lay aside 
the presumptuous attitude of an instruct- 
or, and am content to paint, with such 
colors as my own heart furnishes, that 
which has been. 

Had I known a person more highly 
endowed than yourself with all that it 
becomes a man to possess, I had soli- 
cited for this work the ornament of his 
name. One more gentle, honorable, 
innocent and brave; one of more exalted 
toleration for all who do and think evil, 
and yet himself more free from evil; one 
who knows better how to receive, and 
how to confer a benefit though he must 
ever confer far more than he can receive; 
one of simpler, and, in the highest sense 
of the word, of purer life and manners 
I never knew : and I had already been 
fortunate in friendships when your name 
was added to the list. 



In that patient and irreconcilable en- 
mity with domestic and political tyranny 
and imposture which the tenor of your 
life has illustrated, and which, had I 
health and talents, should illustrate mine, 
let us, comforting each other in our task, 
live and die. 

All happiness attend you ! Your affec- 
tionate friend, Percy B. Shelley. 

Rome, May 29, 1819. 



PREFACE. 

A Manuscript was communicated to 
me during my travels in Italy, which was 
copied from the archives of the Cenci 
Palace at Rome, and contains a detailed 
account of the horrors which ended in 1 
the extinction of one of the noblest and 
richest families of that city during the 
Pontificate of Clement VIII., in the year 1 
1599. The story is, that an old man 4 
having spent his life in debauchery and 
wickedness, conceived at length an im- 
placable hatred towards his children; 
which showed itself towards one daugh- 
ter under the form of an incestuous pas- 
sion, aggravated by every circumstance 
of cruelty and violence. This daughter, 
after long and vain attempts to escape 
from what she considered a perpetual 
contamination both of body and mind, 
at length plotted with her mother-in-law 
and brother to murder their common 
tyrant. The young maiden, who was 
urged to this tremendous deed by an im- 
pulse which overpowered its horror, was 
evidently a most gentle and amiable be- 
ing, a creature formed to adorn and be 
admired, and thus violently thwarted 
from her nature by the necessity of cir- 
cumstance and opinion. The deed was 
quickly discovered, and, in spite of the 
most earnest prayers made to the Pope 
by the highest persons in Rome, the 
criminals were put to death. The old 
man had during his life repeatedly bought 
his pardon from the Pope for capital 
crimes of the most enormous and un- 
speakable kind, at the price of a hundred 
thousand crowns; the death therefore of 
his victims can scarcely be accounted for 



THE CENCI. 



309 



by the love of justice. The Pope, among 
other motives for severity, probably felt 
that whoever killed the Count Cenci de- 
prived his treasury of a certain and copi- 
ous source of revenue. 1 Such a story, 
if told so as to present to the reader all 
the feelings of those who once acted it, 
their hopes and fears, their confidences 
and misgivings, their various interests, 
passions, and opinions, acting upon and 
with each other, yet all conspiring to one 
tremendous end, would be as a light to 
make apparent some of the most dark 
and secret caverns of the human heart. 

On my arrival at Rome I found that 
the story of the Cenci was a subject not 
to be mentioned in Italian society with- 
out awakening a deep and breathless 
interest; and that the feelings of the 
company never failed to incline to a ro- 
mantic pity for the wrongs, and a pas- 
sionate exculpation of the horrible deed 
to which they urged her, who has been 
mingled two centuries with the common 
dust. All ranks of people knew the out- 
lines of this history, and participated in 
the overwhelming interest which it seems 
to have the magic of exciting in the hu- 
man heart. I had a copy of Guido's 
picture of Beatrice which is preserved in 
the Colonna Palace, and my servant in- 
stantly recognized it as the portrait of 
La Cenci. 

This national and universal interest 
which the story produces and has pro- 
duced for two centuries and among all 
ranks of people in a great City, where 
the imagination is kept for ever active 
and awake, first suggested to me the 
conception of its fitness for a dramatic 
purpose. In fact it is a tragedy which 
has already received, from its capacity 
of awakening and sustaining the sympa- 
thy of men, approbation and success. 
Nothing remained as I imagined, but to 
clothe it to the apprehensions of my 
countrymen in such language and action 



1 The Papal Government formerly took the 
most extraordinary precautions against the pub- 
licity of facts which offer so traajical a demon- 
stration of its own wickedness and weakness ; so 
that the communication of the MS. had become, 
until very lately, a matter of some difficulty. 



as would bring it home to their hearts. 
The deepest and the sublimest tragic 
compositions, King Lear and the two 
plays in which the tale of CEdipus is told, 
were stories which already existed in 
tradition, as matters of popular belief 
and interest, before Shakespeare and 
Sophocles made them familiar to the 
sympathy of all succeeding generations 
of mankind. 

This story of the Cenci is indeed emi- 
nently fearful and monstrous : anything 
like a dry exhibition of it on the stage 
would be insupportable. The person 
who would treat such a subject must 
increase the ideal, and diminish the actual 
horror of the events, so that the pleasure 
which arises from the poetry which exists 
in these tempestuous sufferings and crimes 
may mitigate the pain of the contempla- 
tion of the moral deformity from which 
they spring. There must also be nothing 
attempted to make the exhibition subser- 
vient to what is vulgarly termed a moral 
purpose. The highest moral purpose 
aimed at in the highest species of the 
drama, is the teaching the human heart, 
through its sympathies and antipathies, 
the knowledge of itself; in proportion to 
the possession of which knowledge, every 
human being is wise, just, sincere, toler- 
ant and kind. If dogmas can do more, 
it is well : but a drama is no fit place for 
the enforcement of them. Undoubtedly, 
no person can be truly dishonored by 
the act of another; and the fit return to 
make to the most enormous injuries is 
kindness and forbearance, and a resolu- 
tion to convert the injurer from his dark 
passions by peace and love. Revenge, 
retaliation, atonement, are pernicious 
mistakes. If Beatrice had thought in 
this manner she would have been wiser 
and better; but she would never have 
been a tragic character : the few whom 
such an exhibition would have interested, 
could never have been sufficiently inter- 
ested for a dramatic purpose, from the 
want of finding sympathy in their inter- 
est among the mass who surround them. 
It is in the restless and anatomizing casu- 
istry with which men seek the justifi- 
cation of Beatrice, yet feel that she has 



310 



THE CENCL 



done what needs justification; it is in the 
superstitious horror with which they con- 
template alike her wrongs and their re- 
venge, that the dramatic character of 
what she did and suffered, consists. 

I have endeavored as nearly as possi- 
ble to represent the characters as they 
probably were, and have sought to avoid 
the error of making them actuated by my 
own conceptions of right or wrong, false 
or true : thus under a thin veil converting 
names and actions of the sixteenth cen- 
tury into cold impersonations of my own 
mind. They are represented as Catho- 
lics, and as Catholics deeply tinged with 
religion. To a Protestant apprehension 
there will appear something unnatural in 
the earnest and perpetual sentiment of 
the relations between God and men 
which pervade the tragedy of the Cenci. 
It will especially be startled at the com- 
bination of an undoubting persuasion of 
the truth of the popular religion with 
a cool . and determined perseverance in 
enormous guilt. But religion in Italy is 
not, as in Protestant countries, a cloak 
to be worn on particular days; or a pass- 
port which those who do not wish to be 
railed at carry with them to exhibit; or a 
gloomy passion for penetrating the im- 
penetrable mysteries of our being, which 
terrifies its possessor at the darkness of 
the abyss to the brink of which it has 
conducted him. Religion coexists, as it 
were, in the mind of an Italian Catholic, 
with a faith in that of which all men 
have the most certain knowledge. It is 
interwoven with the whole fabric of life. 
It is adoration, faith, subm.ission, peni- 
tence, blind admiration; not a rule for 
moral conduct. It has no necessary con- 
nection with any one virtue. The most 
atrocious villain may be rigidly devout, 
and without any shock to established 
faith, confess himself to be so. Religion 
pervades intensely the whole frame of 
society, and is according to the temper 
of the mind which it inhabits, a passion, 
a persuasion, an excuse, a refuge; never 
a check. Cenci himself built a chapel 
in the court of his Palace, and dedicated 
it to St. Thomas the Apostle, and es- 
tablished masses for the peace of his 



soul. Thus in the first scene of the 
fourth act Lucretia's design in exposing 
herself to the consequences of an expos- 
tulation with Cenci after having adminis- 
tered the opiate, was to induce him by a 
feigned tale to confess himself before 
death; this being esteemed by Catholics 
as essential to salvation; and she only 
relinquishes her purpose when she per- 
ceives that her perseverance would ex- 
pose Beatrice to new outrages. 

I have avoided with great care in writ- 
ing this play the introduction of what is 
commonly called mere poetry, and I 
imagine there will scarcely be found a 
detached simile or a single isolated de- 
scription, unless Beatrice's description of 
the chasm appointed for her father's 
murder should be judged to be of that 
nature. 1 

In a dramatic composition the imagery 
and the passion should interpenetrate one 
another, the former being reserved simply \ 
for the full development and illustration 
of the latter. Imagination is as the im- 
mortal God which should assume flesh 
for the redemption of mortal passion. It 
is thus that the most remote and the most 
familiar imagery may alike be fit for 
dramatic purposes when employed in the 
illustration of strong feeling, which raises 
what is low, and levels to the apprehen- 
sion that which is lofty, casting over all 
the shadow of its own greatness. In 
other respects, I have written more care- 
lessly; that is, without an over-fastidious 
and learned choice of words. In this re- 
spect I entirely agree with those modern 
critics who assert that in order to move 
men to true sympathy we must use the 
familiar language of men, and that our 
great ancestors the ancient English poets 
are the writers, a study of whom might 
incite us to do that for our own age which 
they have done for theirs. But it must 
be the real language of men in general 
and not that of any particular class to 
whose society the writer happens to 

1 

1 An idea in this speech was suggested by a 
most sublime passage in " El Purgatorio de San 
Patricio " of Calderon ; the only plagiarism 
which I have intentionally committed in the \ 
whole piece. 



THE CENCT. 



3" 



belong. So much for what I have at- 
tempted; I need not be assured that 
success is a very different matter; particu- 
larly for one whose attention has but 
newly been awakened to the study of 
dramatic literature. 

I endeavored whilst at Rome to observe 
such monuments of this story as might be 
accessible to a stranger. The portrait of 
Beatrice at the Colonna Palace is admir- 
able as a work of art : it was taken by 
Guido during her confinement in prison. 
But it is naost interesting as a just repre- 
sentation of one of the loveliest speci- 
mens of the workmanship of Nature. 
There is a fixed and pale composure upon 
the features: she seems sad and stricken 
down in spirit, yet the despair thus ex- 
pressed is lightened by the patience of 
gentleness. Her head is bound with 
folds of white drapery from which the 
yellow strings of her golden hair escape, 
and fall about her neck. The moulding 
of her face is exquisitely delicate; the 
eyebrows are distinct and arched : the 
lips have that permanent meaning of 
imagination and sensibility which suffer- 
ing has not repressed and which it seems 
as if death scarcely could extinguish. 
Her forehead is large and clear; her eyes 
which we are told were remarkable for 
their vivacity, are swollen with weeping 
and lustreless, but beautifully tender and 
serene. In the whole mien there is a 
simplicity and dignity which united with 
her exquisite loveliness and deep sor- 
row are inexpressibly pathetic. Beatrice 
Cenci appears to have been one of those 
rare persons in whom energy and gentle- 
ness dwell together without destroying 
one another : her nature was simple and 
profound. The crimes and miseries in 
which she was an actor and a sufferer 
are as the mask and the mantle in which 
circumstances clothed her for her imper- 
sonation on the scene of the world. 

The Cenci Palace is of great extent; 
and though in part modernized, there yet 
remains a vast and gloomy pile of feudal 
architecture in the same state as during 
the dreadful scenes which are the subject 
of this tragedy. The Palace is situated 
in an obscure corner of Rome, near the 



quarter of the Jews, and from the upper 
windows you see the immense ruins of 
Mount Palatine half hidden under their 
profuse overgrowth of trees. There is 
a court in one part of the Palace (per- 
haps that in which Cenci built the Chapel 
to St. Thomas), supported by granite 
columns and adorned with antique friezes 
of fine workmanship, and built up, ac- 
cording to the ancient Italian fashion, 
with balcony over balcony of open-work. 
One of the gates of the Palace formed of 
immense stones and leading through a 
passage, dark and lofty and opening into 
gloomy subterranean chambers, struck 
me particularly. 

Of the Castle of Petrella, I could ob- 
tain no further information than that 
which is to be found in the manuscript. 



THE CENCI. 

DRAMATIS PERSONM. 
Count Francesco Cenci. 

GlACOMO, ) 7 • o 

T, t his oons. 

Bernardo, ) 

Cardinal Camillo. 
Orsino, a Prelate. 
Savella, the Pope''s Legate. 
Olimpio, ) . 
Marzio, } ^"'^^^""- 
Andrea, Sernant to Cenci. 
Nobles — Judges — Guards — Servants. 

Lucretia, IVi/e of Cenci, and Step-mother 

of his children. 

Beatrice, his Daughter. 

The Scene lies principally in Rome, but changes 
during the fourth Act to Petrella, a Castle 
among the Apulian Apennines. 

Time. During the Pontificate of Clement VIII. 



ACT I. 

SCENE I. — An Apartment in 
THE Cenci Palace. 

Ente7- Count Cenci, and Cardinal 
Camillo. 

Camillo. That matter of the murder 

is husht up 
If you consent to yield his Holiness 
Your fief that lies beyond the Pincian 

gate.— 



312 



THE CENCI. 



It needed all my interest in the conclave 
To bend him to this point : he said that 

you 
Bought perilous impunity with your gold ; 
That crimes like yours if once or twice 

compounded 
Enriched the Church, and respited from 

hell 
An erring soul which might repent and 

live : — 
But that the glory and the interest 
Of the high throne he fills, little consist 
With making it a daily mart of guilt 
As manifold and hideous as the deeds 
Which you scarce hide from men's re- 
volted eyes. 
Cenci. The third of my possessions 

— let it go ! 
Ay, I once heard the nephew of the 

Pope 
Had sent his architect to view the ground. 
Meaning to build a villa on my vines 
The next time I compounded with his 

uncle : 
I little thought he should outwit me so ! 
Henceforth no witness — not the lamp — 

shall see 
That which the vassal threatened to di- 
vulge 
Whose throat is choked with dust for his 

reward. 
The deed he saw could not have rated 

higher 
Than his most worthless life : — it angers 

me ! 
Respited me from Hell: — so may the 

Devil 
Respite their souls from Heaven. No 

doubt Pope Clement, 
And his most charitable nephews, pray 
That the Apostle Peter and the saints 
Will grant for their sake that I long 

enjoy 
Strength, wealth, and pride, and lust, and 

length of days 
Wherein to act the deeds which are the 

stewards 
Of their revenue. — But much yet remains 
To which they show no title. 

Camillo. Oh, Count Cenci ! 

So much that thou mightst honorably live 
And reconcile thyself with thine own 

heart 



And with thy God, and with the offended 
world. 

How hideously look deeds of lust and 
blood 

Thro' those snow white and venerable 
hairs ! — 

Your children should be sitting round you 
now, 

But that you fear to read upon their looks 

The shame and misery you have written 
there. 

Where is your wife? Where is your 
gentle daughter? 

Methinks her sweet looks, which make 
all things else 

Beauteous and glad, might kill the fiend 
within you. 

Why is she barred from all society 

But her own strange and uncomplaining 
wrongs? 

Talk with me. Count, — you know I 
mean you well. 

I stood beside your dark and fiery youth 

Watching its bold and bad career, as 
men 

Watch meteors, but it vanisht not — 
I markt 

Your desperate and remorseless man- 
hood; now 

Do I behold you in dishonored age 

Charged with a thousand unrepented 
crimes. 

Yet I have ever hoped you would amend. 

And in that hope have saved your life 
three times. 
Cenci. For which Aldobrandino owes 
you now 

My fief beyond the Pincian. — Cardinal, 

One thing, I pray you, recollect hence- 
forth, 

And so we shall converse with less re- 
straint. 

A man you knew spoke of my wife and 
daughter — 

He was accustomed to frequent my 
house; 

So the next day his wife and daughter 
came 

And asked if I had seen him; and I 
smiled : 

I think they never saw him any more. 
Cajiiillo. Thou execrable man, be- 
ware ! — 



THE CEMCL 



31: 



Cenci. Of thee? 

Nay this is idle : — We should know each 

other. 
As to my character for what men call 

crime 
Seeing I please my senses as I list, 
And vindicate that right with force or 

guile, 
It is a public matter, and I care not 
If I discuss it with you. I may speak 
Alike to you and my own conscious 

heart — 
For you give out that you have half re- 
formed me, 
Therefore strong vanity will keep you 

silent 
If fear should not; both will, I do not 

doubt. 
All men delight in sensual luxury. 
All men enjoy revenge; and most exult 
Over the tortures they can never feel — 
Flattering their secret peace with others' 
\ pain. 

But I delight in nothing else. I love 
The sight of agony, and the sense of 

joy, 

When this shall be another's, and that 

mine. 
And I have no remorse and little fear. 
Which are, I think, the checks of other 

men. 
This mood has grown upon me, until 

now 
Any design my captious fancy makes 
The picture of its wish, and it forms 

none 
But such as men like you would start to 

know, 
Is as my natural food and rest debarred 
Until it be accomplisht. 

Camilio. Art thou not 

Most miserable? 

Cenci. Why miserable ? — 

No. — I am what your theologians call 
Hardened; — which they must be in 

impudence, 
So to revile a man's peculiar taste. 
True, I was happier than I am, while 

yet 
Manhood remained to act the thing I 

thought; 
While lust was sweeter than revenge; 

and now 



Invention palls: — Ay, we must all grow 

old — 
And but that there yet remains a deed to 

act 
Whose horror might make sharp an 

appetite 
Duller than mine — I 'd do — I know not 

what. 
When I was young I thought of nothing 

else 
But pleasure; and I fed on honey sweets: 
Men, by St. Thomas ! cannot live like 

bees, 
And I grew tired: — yet, till I killed a* 

foe, 
And heard his groans, and heard his 

children's groans. 
Knew I not what delight was else on 

earth, 
Which now delights me little. I the 

rather 
Look on such pangs as terror ill con- 
ceals. 
The dry fixt eyeball; the pale quiver- 
ing lip. 
Which tell me that the spirit weeps 

within 
Tears bitterer than the bloody sweat of 

Christ. 
I rarely kill the body, which preserves. 
Like a strong prison, the soul within my 

power. 
Wherein I feed it with the breath of fear 
For hourly pain. 

Camilla. Hell's most aban- 

doned fiend 
Did never, in the drunkenness of guilt, 
Speak to his heart as now you speak to 

me; 
I thank my God that I believe you not. 
Elite)' Andrea. 
Andrea. My Lord, a gentleman from 

Salamanca 
Would speak with you. 

Cenci. Bid him attend me in the 

grand saloon. [y^>?V ANDREA. 

Camilio. Farewell; and I will pray 

Almighty God that thy false, impious 

words 
Tempt not his spirit to abandon thee. 

\^Exit Camillo. 
Cenci. The third of my possession* ! 

I must use 



314 



THE CENCL 



Close husbandry, or gold, the old man's 

sword, 
Falls from my withered hand. But yes- 
terday 
There came an order from the Pope to 

make 
Fourfold provision for my cursed sons; 
Whom I had sent from Rome to Sala- 
manca, 
Hoping some accident might cut them 

off; 
And meaning if I could to starve them 

there. 
1 pray thee, God, send some quick death 

upon them ! 
Bernardo and my wife could not be worse 
If dead and damned : — then, as to 

Beatrice — 
(Looking around hi f?i suspiciously.) 
I think they cannot hear me at that 

door ; 
What if they should? And yet I need 

not speak 
Tho' the heart triumphs with itself in 

words. 
O, thou most silent air, that shalt not 

hear 
What now I think ! Thou, pavement, 

which I tread 
Towards her chamber, — let your echoes 

talk 
Of my imperious step scorning surprise, 
But not of my intent ! — Andrea ! 
Enter Andrea. 
Andrea. My lord? 

Cenci. Bid Beatrice attend me in 

her chamber 
This evening : — no, at midnight and 

alone. {^Exeunt. 

SCENE II. — A Garden of the Cenci 
Palace. Enter Beatrice and Or- 
SINO, as in conversation. 

Beatrice. Pervert not truth, 

Orsino. You remember where we held 
That conversation; — nay, we see the 

spot 
Even from this cypress; — two long years 

are past 
Since, on an April midnight, under- 
neath 



The moonlight ruins of mount Palatine, 
I did confess to you my secret mind. 
Orsino. You said you loved me then, 
Beatrice. You are a Priest, 

Speak to me not of love. 

Orsino. I may obtain 

The dispensation of the Pope to marry. 
Because I am a Priest do you believe 
Your image, as the hunter some struck 

deer. 
Follows me not whether I wake or 

sleep? 
Beatrice. As I have said, speak to 

me not of love; 
Had you a dispensation I have not; 
Nor will I leave this home of misery 
Whilst my poor Bernard, and that gentle 

lady 
To whom I owe life, and these virtuous 

thoughts, 
Must suffer what I still have strength to 

share. 
Alas, Orsino ! All the love that once 
I felt for you, is turned to bitter pain. 
Ours was a youthful contract, which you 

first 
Broke, by assuming vows no Pope will 

loose. 
And thus I love you still, but holily, 
Even as a sister or a spirit might; 
And so I swear a cold fidelity. 
And it is well perhaps we shall not 

marry. 
You have a sly, equivocating vein 
That suits me not. — Ah, wretched that 

I am ! 
Where shall I turn ? Even now you look 

on me 
As you were not my friend, and as if you 
Discovered that I thought so, with false 

smiles 
Making my true suspicion seem your 

wrong. 
Ah no! forgive me; sorrow makes me 

seem 
Sterner than else my nature might have 

been; 
I have a weight of melancholy thoughts, 
And they forbode, — but what can they 

forbode 
Worse than I now endure? 

Orsino. All will be well. 

Is the petition yet prepared? You know 



'THE CENCI, 



315 



My zeal for all you wish, sweet Beatrice; 
Doubt not but I will use my utmost 

skill 
So that the Pope attend to your com- 
plaint. 
Beatrice: Your zeal for all I wish; 

— Ah me, you are cold ! 
Your utmost skill , . . speak but one 

word . . . {aside') Alas ! 
Weak and deserted creature that I am, 
Here I stand bickering with my only 

friend ! [ To Orsino. 

This night my father gives a sumptuous 

feast, 
Orsino; he has heard some happy news 
From Salamanca, from my brothers there. 
And with this outward show of love he 

mocks 
His inward hate. 'T is bold hypocrisy, 
For he would gladlier celebrate their 

deaths, 
Which I have heard him pray for on his 

knees: 
Great God ! that such a father should be 

mine ! 
But there is mighty preparation made. 
And all our kin, the Cenci, will be there. 
And all the chief nobility of Rome. 
And he has bidden me and my pale 

Mother 
Attire ourselves in festival array. 
Poor lady ! She expects some happy 

change 
In his dark spirit from this act; I none. 
At supper I will give you the petition : 
Till when — farewell. 

Orsino. Farewell. (^jczV Beatrice.^ 

I know the Pope 
Will ne'er absolve me from my priestly 

vow 
But by absolving me from the revenue 
Of many a wealthy see; and, Beatrice, 
I think to win thee at an easier rate. 
Nor shall he read her eloquent petition: 
He might bestow her on some poor 

relation 
Of his sixth cousin, as he did her sister, 
And I should be debarred from all access. 
Then as to what she suffers from her 

father. 
In all this there is much exaggeration : — 
Old men are testy and will have their 

way; 



A man may stab his enemy, or his vassal. 
And live a free life as to wine or women, 
And with a peevish temper may return 
To a dull home, and rate his wife and 

children; 
Daughters and wives call this foul 

tyranny. 
I shall be well content if on my con- 
science 
There rest no heavier sin than what they 

suffer 
From the devices of my love — a net 
From which she shall escape not. Yet I 

fear 
Her subtle mind, her awe-inspiring gaze, 
Whose beams anatomize me nerve by 

nerve 
And lay me bare, and make me blush to 

see 
My hidden thoughts. — Ah, no ! A friend- 
less girl 
Who clings to me, as to her only hope : — 
I were a fool, not less than if a panther 
Were panic-stricken by the antelope's 

eye. 
If she escape me. \^Exit. 



SCENE III. — A MAGNIFICENT HaLL 

IN THE Cenci Palace. A Banquet. 
Enter Cenci, Lucretia, Beatrice, 
Orsino, Camillo, Nobles. 

Cenci. Welcome, my friends and 

kinsmen; welcome ye. 
Princes and Cardinals, pillars of the 

church. 
Whose presence honors our festivity. 
I have too long lived like an anchorite. 
And in my absence from your merry 

meetings 
An evil word is gone abroad of me; 
But I do hope that you, my noble friends. 
When you have shared the entertainment 

here. 
And heard the pious cause for which 'tis 

given, 
And we have pledged a health or two 

together, 
Will think me flesh and blood as well as 

you; 
Sinful indeed, for Adam made all so. 
But tender-hearted, meek and pitiful. 



3i6 



THE CEIYCI. 



First Guest. In truth, my Lord, you 

seem too light of heart, 
Too sprightly and companionable a 

man, 
To act the deeds that rumor pins on you. 
( To his couipanion. ) I never saw such 

blithe and open cheer 
In any eye ! 

Second Guest. Some most desired 

event, 
In which we all demand a common joy. 
Has brought us hither; let us hear it, 

Count. 
Cenci. It is indeed a most desired 

event. 
If, when a parent from a parent's heart 
Lifts from this earth to the great Father 

of all 
A prayer, both when he lays him down 

to sleep, 
And when he rises up from dreaming it; 
One supplication, one desire, one hope, 
That he would grant a wish for his two 

sons, 
Even all that he demands in their re- 
gard — 
And suddenly beyond his dearest hope. 
It is accomplisht, he should then rejoice, 
And call his friends and kinsmen to a 

feast, 
And task their love to grace his merri- 
ment. 
Then honor me thus far — for I am he. 
Beatrice (^to Lucretia). Great God ! 

How horrible ! Some dreadful ill 
Must have befallen my brothers. 

Lucretia. Fear not. Child, 

He speaks too frankly. 

Beatrice. Ah ! my blood 

runs cold. 
I fear that wicked laughter round his eye. 
Which wrinkles up the skin even to the 

hair. 
Cenci. Here are the letters brought 

from vSalamanca; 
Beatrice, read them to your mother. 

God! 
I thank thee ! In one night didst thou 

perform. 
By ways inscrutable, the thing I sought. 
My disobedient and rebellious sons 
Are dead ! — Why, dead ! — What means 

this change of cheer? 



You hear me not, I tell you they are 

dead ; 
And they will need no food or raiment 

more : 
The tapers that did light them the dark 

way 
Are their last cost. The Pope, I think, 

will not 
Expect I should maintain them in tneir 

cofftns. 
Rejoice with me — my heart is wondrous 

glad. 

[Lucretia sinks, half-faxnting ; 
Beatrice supports her. 
Beatrice. It is not true ! — Dear lady, 

pray look up. 
Had it been true, there is a God in 

Heaven, 
He would not live to boast of such a 

boon. 
Unnatural man, thou knowest that it is 

false. 
Cenci. Ay, as the word of God ; whom 

here I call 
To witness that I speak the sober truth; — 
And whose most favoring Providence was 

shown 
Even in the manner of their deaths. 

For Rocco 
Was kneeling at the mass, with sixteen 

others. 
When the church fell and crusht him to 

a mummy, 
The rest escaped unhurt. Cristofano 
Was stabbed in error by a jealous man. 
Whilst she he loved was sleeping with 

his rival : 
All in the self-same hour of the same 

night; 
Which shows that Heaven has special 

care of me. 
I beg those friends who love me, that 

they mark 
The day a feast upon their calendars. 
It was the twenty-seventh of December: 
Ay, read the letters if you doubt my oath. 

[ The assembly appears confused ; 
several of the guests rise. 
First Guest. Oh, horrible ! I will 

depart — 
Second Guest. And I . — 

7^1 ird Guest. No, stay ! 

I do believe it is some jest; tho' faith ! 



THE CENCI. 



Z^l 



'Tis mocking us somewhat too solemnly. 

I think his son has married the Infanta, 

Or found a mine of gold in El dorado; 

'Tis but to season some such news; stay, 
stay ! 

I see 't is only raillery by his smile. 
Cenci {^ filling a boivl of wine, and 
lifting it up^. Oh, thou bright 
wine whose purple splendor leaps 

And bubbles gayly in this golden bowl 

Under the lamp-light, as my spirits do, 

To hear the death of my accursed sons ! 

Could I believe thou wert their mingled 
blood, 

Then would I taste thee like a sacra- 
ment. 

And pledge with thee the mighty Devil 
in Hell, 

Who, if a father's curses, as men say. 

Climb with swift wings after their chil- 
dren's souls, 

And drag them from the very throne of 
Heaven, 

Now triumphs in my triumph ! — But thou 
art 

Superfluous; I have drunken deep of 

And I will taste no other wine to-night. 
Here, Andrea ! Bear the bowl around. 

A Guest (rising). Thou wretch! 

Will none among this noble company 
Check the abandoned villain? 

Cajuillo. For God's sake 

Let me dismiss the guests ! You are 

insane. 
Some ill will come of this. 

Second Guest. Seize, silence him ! 

First Guest. I will ! 
Third Guest. And I? 

Cenci {addressing those 7vho rise with 
a threatening gesture). Who 

moves? W^ho speaks? 

{turning to the Company) 

't is nothing. 

Enjoy yourselves. — Beware! For my 

revenge 
Is as the sealed commission of a king 
That kills, and none dare name the mur- 
derer. 
[ The Banquet is broken up; several 
of the Guests are departing. 
Beatrice. I do entreat you, go not, 
noble guests; 



What, altho' tyranny and impious hate 
Stand sheltered by a father's hoary hair? 
What, if 'tis he who clothed us in these 

limbs 
Who tortures them, and triumphs ? 

What, if we, 
The desolate and the dead, were his own 

flesh. 
His children and his wife, whom he is 

bound 
To love and shelter ? Shall we therefore 

find 
No refuge in this merciless wide world ? 

think what deep wrongs must have 

blotted out 
First love, then reverence in a child's 

prone mind, 
Till it thus vanquish shame and fear ! 

O think ! 

1 have borne much, and kissed the sacred 

hand 

Which crusht us to the earth, and 
thought its stroke 

Was perhaps some paternal chastise- 
ment ! 

Have excused much, doubted; and when 
no doubt 

Remained, have sought by patience, love, 
and tears 

To soften him, and when this could not 
be 

I have knell down through the long sleep- 
less nights 

And lifted up to God, the father of all, 

Passionate prayers : and when these were 
not heard 

I have still borne, — until I meet you 
here. 

Princes and kinsmen, at this hideous 
feast 

Given at my brothers' deaths. Two yet 
remain, 

His wife remains and I, whom if ye save 
not. 

Ye may soon share such merriment again 

As fathers make over their children's 
graves. 

O Prince Colonna, thou art our near 
kinsman. 

Cardinal, thou art the Pope's Chamber- 
lain, 

Camillo, thou art chief justiciary, 

Take us away ! 



31^ 



THE CENCI. 



Cenci (^he has been conversing with 
Camillo during the first part of 
Beatrice's speech ; he hears the 
conclusion^ and now advances^. 
I hope my good friends here 

Will think of their own daughters — or 
perhaps 

Of their own throats — before they lend 
an ear 

To this wild girl. 

Beatrice (^not noticing the words of 
Cenci). Dare no one look 

on me ? 

None answer ? Can one tyrant overbear 

The sense of many best and wisest men ? 

Or is it that I sue not in some form 

Of scrupulous law, that ye deny my suit ? 

O God ! That I were buried with my 
brothers ! 

And that the flowers of this departed 
spring 

Were fading on my grave ! And that my 
father 

Were celebrating now one feast for all ! 
Camillo. A bitter wish for one so 
young and gentle; 

Can we do nothing ? 

Colonna. Nothing that I see. 

Count Cenci were a dangerous enemy : 

Yet I would second any one. 

A Cardinal. And I. 

Cenci. Retire to your chamber, inso- 
lent girl ! 
Beatrice. Retire thou impious man ! 
Ay hide thyself 

Where never eye can look upon thee 
more ! 

Wouldst thou have honor and obedience 

Who art a torturer ? Father, never 
dream 

Though thou mayst overbear this com- 
pany, 

But ill must come of ill. — Frown not on 
me ! 

Haste, hide thyself, lest with avenging 
looks 

My brothers' ghosts should hunt thee 
from thy seat ! 

Cover thy face from every living eye, 

And start if thou but hear a human step : 

Seek out some dark and silent corner, 
there. 

Bow thy white head before offended God, 



And we will kneel around, and fervently 
Pray that he pity both ourselves, and 
thee. 
Cenci. My friends, I do lament this 
insane girl 
Has spoilt the mirth of our festivity. 
Good-night, farewell; I will not make 

you longer 
Spectators of our dull domestic quarrels. 
Another time. — 
\_Exeunt all but Cenci ajtd Beatrice. 
My brain is swimming round ; 
Give me a bowl of wine ! 

[ To Beatrice. 
Thou painted viper ! 
Beast that thou art ! Fair and yet terri- 
ble ! 
I know a charm shall make thee meek 

and tame. 
Now get thee from my sight ! 

{Exit Beatrice. 
Here, Andrea, 
Fill up this goblet with Greek wine. I 

said 
I would not drink this evening; but I 

must; 
For, strange to say, I feel my spirits fail 
With thinking what I have decreed to do. 
\_Drinking the 7vine. 
Be thou the resolution of quick youth 
Within my veins, and manhood's purpose 

stern, 
And age's firm, cold, subtle villany; 
As if thou wert indeed my children's 

blood 
Which I did thirst to drink ! The charm 

works well; 
It must be done; it shall be done, I 
swear ! {Exit. 

END OF FIRST ACT. 



ACT H. 

SCENE I. — An Apartment in the 
Cenci Palace. ^«/(?r Lucretia rt//d 
Bernardo. 

Lucretia. Weep not, my gentle boy; 
he struck but me 
Who have borne deeper wrongs. In 
truth, if he 



THE CENCL 



319 



Had killed me, he had done a kinder 

deed. 
O, God Almighty, do thou look upon us, 
We have no other friend but only thee ! 
Yet weep not; though I love you as my 

own, 
I am not your true mother. 

Bernardo. O more, more, 

Than ever mother was to any child. 
That have you been to me ! Had he not 

been 
My father, do you think that I should 

weep ! 
Lucretia. Alas ! Poor boy, what else 

couldst thou have done ? 
Enter Beatrice. 
Beatrice (^in a hurried voice^. Did 

he pass this way ? Have you seen 

him, brother ? 
Ah ! No, that is his step upon the stairs; 
'T is nearer now; his hand is on the door; 
Mother, if I to thee have ever been 
A duteous child, now save me ! Thou, 

great God, 
Whose image upon earth a father is. 
Dost thou indeed abandon me ? He 

comes; 
The door is opening now; I see his 

face; 
He frowns on others, but he smiles on 

me, 
Even as he did after the feast last night. 

Enter a Servant. 
Almighty God, how merciful thou art ! 
'T is but Orsino's servant. — Well, what 

news? 
Servant. My master bids me say, 

the Holy Father 
Has sent back your petition thus un- 
opened. [Giving a paper. 
And he demands at what hour 'twere 

secure 
To visit you again ? 

Lucretia. At the Ave Mary. 

\^Exit Servant. 

So, daughter, our last hope has failed; 

Ah me ! 
How pale you look; you tremble, and 

you stand 
Wrapt in some fixed and fearful medi- 
tation. 
As if one thought were over strong for 

you ; 



Your eyes have a chill glare; O, dearest- 

child ! 
Are you gone mad? If not, pray speak 

to me. 
Beatrice. You see I am not mad: I 

speak to you. 
Lucretia. You talkt of something 

that your father did 
After that dreadful feast? Could it be 

worse 
Than when he smiled, and cried, My 

sons are dead ! 
And every one lookt in his neighbor's 

face 
To see if others were as white as he? 
At the first word he spoke I felt the 

blood 
Rush to my heart, and fell into a trance; 
And when it past I sat all weak and 

wild; 
Whilst you alone stood up, and with 

strong words 
Checkt his unnatural pride; and I could 

see 
The devil was rebuked that lives in him. 
Until this hour thus have you ever stood 
Between us and your father's moody 

wrath 
Like a protecting presence: your firm 

mind 
Has been our only refuge and defence : 
What can have thus subdued it? What 

can now 
Have given you that cold melancholy 

look, 
Succeeding to your unaccustomed fear? 
Beatrice. What is it that you say? 

I was just thinking 
'T were better not to struggle any more. 
Men, like my father, have been dark 

and bloody, 
Yet never — Oh! Before worse comes 

of it 
'T were wise to die: it ends in that at 

last. 
Lucretia. O talk not so, dear child ! 

Tell me at once 
What did your father do or say to you? 
He stayed not after that accursed feast 
One moment in your chamber. — Speak 

to me. 
Bernardo. O sister, sister, prithee, 

speak to us ! 



320 



THE CENCL 



Beatrice {^speaking very slowly with a 

forced cal/iuiess). It was one 

word, Mother, one little word; 
One look, one smile. {IVildly.) Oh! 

He has trampled me 
Under his feet, and made the blood 

stream down 
My pallid cheeks. And he has given us 

all 
Ditch water, and the fever-stricken 

fiesh 
Of buffaloes, and bade us eat or starve. 
And we have eaten. — He has made me 

look 
On my beloved Bernardo, when the rust 
Of heavy chains has gangrened his sweet 

limbs, 
And I have never yet despaired — but 

now ! 
What could I say? \_Recovering herself. 
Ah ! No, 't is nothing new 
The sufferings we all share have made 

me wild: 
He only struck and curst me as he 

past; 
He said, he lookt, he did; — nothing 

at all 
Beyond his wont, yet it disordered me. 
Alas ! I am forgetful of my duty, 
I should preserve my senses for your 

sake. 
Lucretia. Nay, Beatrice; have cour- 
age my sweet girl. 
If any one despairs it should be I 
Who loved him once, and now must live 

with him 
Till God in pity call for him or me. 
For you may, like your sister, find some 

husband. 
And smile, years hence, with children 

round your knees; 
Whilst I, then dead, and all this hideous 

coil 
Shall be remembered only as a dream. 
Beatrice. Talk not to me, dear lady, 

of a husband. 
Did you not nurse me when my mother 

died? 
Did you not shield me and that dearest 

boy? 
And had we any other friend but you 
In infancy, with gentle words and looks 
To win our father not to murder us? 



And shall I now desert you? May the 

ghost 
Of my dead Mother plead against my soul 
If I abandon her who filled the place 
She left, with more, even, than a 

mother's love ! 
Bernardo. And I am of my sister's 

mind. Indeed 
I would not leave you in this wretched- 
ness, 
Even though the Pope should make me 

free to live 
In some blithe place, like others of my 

age, 
With sports, and delicate food, and the 

fresh air. 
O never think that I will leave you, 

Mother ! 
Lucretia. My dear, dear children ! 

Enter Cenci, suddenly. 
Cenci. What, Beatrice here ! 

Come hither ! 
\_She shrinks back, and covers her face. * 

Nay, hide not your face, 't is fair; , 
Look up ! Why, yesternight you dared 

to look 
With disobedient insolence upon me, 
Bending a stern and an inquiring brow 
On what I meant; whilst I then sought 

to hide 
That which I came to tell you — but in 

vain. 
Beatrice {wildly, staggering tojvards 

the door'). O that the earth would 

gape ! Hide me, O God ! 
Cenci. Then it was I whose inarticu- 
late words 
Fell from my lips, and who with totter- 
ing steps 
Fled from your presence, as you now 

from mine. 
Stay, I command -you — from this day 

and hour 
Never again, I think, with fearless eye. 
And brow superior, and unaltered cheek. 
And that lip made for tenderness or 

scorn, 
Shalt thou strike dumb the meanest of 

mankind; 
Me least of all. Now get thee to thy 

chamber ! 
Thou too, loathed image of thy cursed 

mother, 



THE CENCI. 



321 



[ To Bernardo. 
Thy milky, meek face makes me sick 

with hate ! 
{Exeunt Beatrice a«</ Bernardo. 
(^Aside.) So much has past between us 

as must make 
Me bold, her fearful. — 'T is an awful 

thing 
To touch such mischief as I now con- 
ceive : 
So men sit shivering on the dewy bank, 
And try the chill stream with their feet; 

once in . . . 
How the delighted spirit pants for joy ! 
Lucrttia {^adva)icing timidly toivards 

him'). O husbaiid ! Pray forgive 

poor Beatrice. 
She meant not any ill. 

Cenci. Nor you perhaps? 

Nor that young imp, whom you have 

taught by rote 
Parricide with his alphabet? Nor 

Giacomo? 
Nor those two most unnatural sons, who 

stirred 
Enmity up against me with the Pope? 
Whom in one night merciful God cut off : 
Innocent lambs ! They thought not any 

ill. 
You were not here conspiring? You 

said nothing 
Of how I might be dungeoned as a 

madman; 
Or be condemned to death for some 

offence, 
And you would be the witnesses? — This 

failing, 
How just it were to hire assassins, or 
Put sudden poison in my evening drink? 
Or smother me when overcome by wine? 
Seeing we had no other judge but God, 
And he had sentenced me, and there 

were none 
But you to be the executioners 
Of his decree enregistered in heaven? 
Oh, no! You said not this? 

Lucretia. So help me God, 

I never thought the things you charge 

me with ! 
Cenci. If you dare speak that wicked 

lie again 
I'll kill you. What! It was not by 

your counsel 



That Beatrice disturbed the feast last 

night? 
You did not hope to stir some enemies 
Against me, and escape, ahd laugh to 

scorn 
What every nerve of you now trembles 

at? 
You judged that men were bolder than 

they are; 
Few dare to stand between their grave 

and me. 
Lucretia. Look not so dreadfully ! 

By my salvation 
I knew not aught that Beatrice designed; 
Nor do I think she designed anything 
Until she heard you talk of her dead 

brothers. 
Cenci. Blaspheming liar ! You are 

damned for this ! 
But I will take you where you may per- 
suade 
The stones you tread on to deliver you : 
For men shall there be none but those 

who dare 
All things — not question that which I 

command. 
On Wednesday next I shall set out : you 

know 
That savage rock, the Castle of Petrella: 
'T is safely walled, and moated round 

about : 
Its dungeons underground, and its thick 

towers 
Never told tales; though they have 

heard and seen 
What might make dumb things speak. — 

Why do you linger? 
Make speediest preparation for the 

journey ! \^Exit Lucretia. 

The all-beholding sun yet shines ; I 

hear 
A busy stir of men about the streets; 
I see the bright sky through the window 

panes : 
It is a garish, broad, and peering day; 
Loud, light, suspicious, full of eyes and 

ears, 
And every little corner, nook, and hole 
Is penetrated with the insolent light. 
Come darkness ! Yet, what is the day to 

me? 
And wherefore should I wish for night, 

who do 



322 



THE CENCI. 



A deed which shall confound both night 

and day? 
'T is she shall grope through a bewilder- 
ing mist 
Of horror : if there be a sun in heaven 
She shall not dare to look upon its beams; 
Nor feel its warmth. Let her then wish 

for night; 
The act I think shall soon extinguish all 
For me : I bear a darker deadlier gloom 
Than the earth's shade, or interlunar air, 
Or constellations quencht in murkiest 

cloud. 
In which I walk secure and unbeheld 
Towards my purpose. — Would that it 
were done ! [ Extt. 



SCENE II. — A Chamber in the 
Vatican. Enter Camillo and 
GiACOMO, in conversation. 

Camillo. There is an obsolete and 

doubtful law 
By which you might obtain a bare 

provision 
Of food and clothing — 

Giacoino. Nothing more? Alas! 

Bare must be the provision which strict 

law 
Awards, and aged, sullen avarice pays. 
Why did my father not apprentice me 
To some mechanic trade? I should have 

then 
Been trained in no highborn necessities 
Which I could meet not by my daily toil. 
The eldest son of a rich nobleman 
Is heir to all his incapacities; 
He has wide wants, and narrow powers. 

If you. 
Cardinal Camillo, were reduced at once 
From thrice-driven beds of down, and 

delicate food, 
An hundred servants, and six palaces, 
To that which nature doth indeed re- 
quire? — 
Camillo. Nay, there is reason in your 

plea; 't were hard. 
Giacomo. 'T is hard for a firm man to 

bear: but I 
Have a dear wife, a lady of high birth, 
Whose dowry in ill hour I lent my father 
Without a bond or witness to the deed : 



And children, who inherit her fine 

senses, 
The fairest creatures in this breathing 

world; 
And she and they reproach me not. 

Cardinal, 
Do you not think the Pope would inter- 
pose 
And stretch authority beyond the law? 
Camillo. Though your peculiar case is 

hard, I know 
The Pope will not divert the course of 

law. 
After that impious feast the other night 
I spoke with him, and urged him then to 

check 
Your father's cruel hand; he frowned 

and said, 
"Children are disobedient, and they 

sting 
Their fathers' hearts to madness and 

despair, 
Requiting years of care with contumely, f 
I pity the Count Cenci from my heart; j 

His outraged love perhaps awakened 

hate, 
And thus he is exasperated to ill. -' 

In the great war between the old and 

young 
I, who have white hairs and a tottering 

body, 
Will keep at least blameless neutrality." 

Enter Orsino. 
You, my good Lord Orsino, heard those 

words. 
Orsitio. What words? 
Giacofuo. Alas, repeat them 

not again ! 
There then is no redress for me, at least 
None but that which I may achieve my- 
self. 
Since I am driven to the brink. — But, 

say. 
My innocent sister and my only brother 
Are dying underneath my father's eye. 
The memorable torturers of this land, 
Galeaz, Visconti, Borgia, Ezzelin, 
Never inflicted on the meanest slave 
What these endure; shall they have no 

protection? 
Camillo. Why, if they would peti- 
tion to the Pope | 
I see not how he could refuse it — yet 



THE CENCT. 



323 



He holds it of most dangerous example 
In aught to weaken the paternal power, 
Being, as 't were, the shadow of his own. 
I pray you now excuse me. I have 

business 
That will not bear delay. 

\_Exit Camillo. 
Giaconio. But you, Orsino, 

Have the petition : wherefore not present 

it? 
Orsino. I have presented it, and 

backed it with 
My earnest prayers, and urgent interest; 
It was returned unanswered. I doubt 

not 
But that the strange and execrable deeds 
Alleged in it — in truth they might well 

baffle 
Any belief — have turned the Pope's 

displeasure 
Upon the accusers from the criminal : 
So I should guess from what Camillo 

said. 
Giacomo. My friend, that palace- 
walking devil Gold 
Has whispered silence to his Holiness : 
And we are left, as scorpions ringed 

with fire. 
What should we do but strike ourselves 

to death? 
For he who is our murderous persecutor 
Is shielded by a father's holy name, 
Or I would — {^Stops abruptly.^ 

Orsino. What? Fear not to speak 

your thought. 
Words are but holy as the deeds they 

cover : 
A priest who has forsworn the God he 

serves ; 
A judge who makes Truth weep at his 

decree; 
A friend who should weave counsel, 

as I now, 
But as the mantle of some selfish guile; 
A father who is all a tyrant seems. 
Were the profaner for his sacred name. 
Giacomo. Ask me not what I think; 

the unwilling brain 
Feigns often what it would not; and we 

trust 
Imagination with such fantasies 
As the tongue dares not fashion into 

words, 



W'hich have no words, their horror 

makes them dim 
To the mind's eye. — My heart denies 

itself 
To think what you demand. 

Orsino. But a friend's bosom 

Is as the inmost cave of our own mind 
Where we sit shut from the wide gaze 

of day, 
And from the all-communicating air. 
You look what I suspected — 

Giacotno. Spare me now ! 

I am as one lost in a midnight wood. 
Who dares not ask some harmless pas- 
senger 
The path across the wilderness, lest he. 
As my thoughts are, should be — a 

murderer. 
I know you are my friend, and all I dare 
Speak to my soul that will I trust with 

thee. 
But now my heart is heavy, and would 

take 
Lone counsel from a night of sleepless 

care. 
Pardon me, that I say farewell — fare- 
well ! 
I would that to my own suspected self 
I could address a word so full of peace. 
Orsino. Farewell ! — Be your thoughts 
better or more bold. 

\Exit Giacomo. 
I had disposed the Cardinal Camillo 
To feed his hope with cold encourage- 
ment : 
It fortunately serves my close designs 
That 't is a trick of this same family 
To analyze their own and other minds. 
Such self-anatomy shall teach the will 
Dangerous secrets: for it tempts our 

powers, 
Knowing what must be thought, and. 

may be done. 
Into the depth of darkest purposes: 
So Cenci fell into the pit; even I, 
Since Beatrice unveiled me to myself, 
And made me shrink from what I can- 
not shun, 
Show a poor figure to my own esteem. 
To which I grow half reconciled. I '11 

do 
As little mischief as I can; that thought 
Shall fee the accuser conscience. 



324 



THE CENCL 



{After a pause.') Now what harm 

If Cenci should be murdered? — Yet, if 

murdered, 
Wherefore by me? And what if I could 

take 
The profit, yet omit the sin and peril 
In such an action? Of all earthly things 
I fear a man whose blows outspeed his 

words; 
And such is Cenci : and while Cenci 

lives 
His daughter's dowry were a secret grave 
If a priest wins her. — Oh, fair Beatrice ! 
Would that I loved thee not, or loving 

thee 
Could but despise danger and gold and 

all 
That frowns between my wish and its 

effect, 
Or smiles beyond it ! There is no 

escape . . . 
Her bright form kneels beside me at 

the altar, 
And follows me to the resort of men. 
And fills my slumber with tumultuous 

dreams, 
So when I wake my blood seems liquid 

fire; 
And if I strike my damp and dizzy head 
My hot palm scorches it: her very 

name, 
But spoken by a stranger, makes my 

heart 
Sicken and pant; and thus unprofitably 
I clasp the phantom of unfelt delights 
Till weak imagination half possesses 
The self-created shadow. Yet much 

longer 
Will I not nurse this life of feverous 

hours : 
From the unravelled hopes of Giacomo 
I must work out my own dear purposes. 
I see, as from a tower, the end of all : 
Her father dead; her brother bound to 

me 
By a dark secret, surer than the grave; 
Her mother scared and unexpostulating 
From the dread manner of her wish 

achieved : 
And she ! — Once more take courage my 

faint heart; 
What dares a friendless maiden matcht 
with thee? 



I have such foresight as assures success*. 
Some unbeheld divinity doth ever. 
When dread events are near, stir up 

men's minds 
To black suggestions; and he prospers 

best. 
Not who becomes the instrument of ill, 
But who can flatter the dark spirit, 

that makes 
Its empire and its prey of other hearts 
Till it become his slave ... as I will 

do. \_Exit. 

END OF THE SECOND ACT. 



ACT III. 

SCENE I. — An Apartment in the 
Cenci Palace. Lucretia, to her 
enter Beatrice. hi 

Beatrice {^she enters staggering, and ^ 

speaks wildly'). Reach me that 

handkerchief ! — My brain is hurt; 
My eyes are full of blood; just wipe 

them for me . . . 
I see but indistinctly. 

Lucretia. My sweet child, 

You have no wound; 'tis only a cold 

dew 
That starts from your dear brow . . . 

Alas ! Alas ! 
What has befallen? 

Beatrice. How comes this hair 

undone? 
Its wandering strings must be what blind 

me so. 
And yet I tied it fast. — O, horrible ! 
The pavement sinks under my feet ! 

The walls 
Spin round ! I see a woman weeping 

there. 
And standing calm and motionless, 

whilst I 
Slide giddily as the world reels. ... 

My God ! 
The beautiful blue heaven is fleckt with 

blood ! 
The sunshine on the floor is black ! The 

air J 

Is changed to vapors such as the dead | 

breathe 



THE CENCI. 



325 



In charnel pits ! Pah ! I am choked ! 

There creeps 
A clinging, black, contaminating mist 
About me . . . 't is substantial, heavy, 

thick, 
I cannot pluck it from me, for it glues 
My fingers and my limbs to one another, 
And eats into my sinews, and dissolves 
My flesh to a pollution, poisoning 
The subtle, pure, and inmost spirit of 

life! 
My God ! I never knew what the mad 

felt 
Before ; for I am mad beyond all doubt ! 
{Alore zvildly.') No, I am dead! These 

putrefying limbs 
Shut round and sepulchre the panting 

soul 
Which would burst forth into the wander- 
ing air ! i^A paiiseS) 
What hideous thought was that I had 

even now? 
'Tis gone; and yet its burden remains 

here 
O'er these dull eyes . . . upon this weary 

heart ! 

world ! O life ! O day ! O misery ! 
Liicretia. What ails thee, my poor 

child? She answers not : 
Her spirit apprehends the sense of pain. 
But not its cause; suffering has dried away 
The source from which it sprung . . . 
Beatrice (^frantically ). Like Parri- 
cide . . . 
Misery has killed its father : yet its father 
Never like mine . . . O God ! What 
thing am I? 
Lucretia. My dearest child, what 

has your father done ? 
Beatrice (^doubtfiilly^ . Who art thou, 
questioner? I have no father. 
(Aside.) She is the madhouse nurse 

who tends on me, 
It is a piteous office. 

( To Lucretia, in a slow, subdued voice. ^ 

Do you know 

1 thought I was that wretched Beatrice 
Men speak of, whom her father some- 
times hales 

From hall to hall by the entangled hair; 
At others, pens up naked in damp cells 
Wher*^ scaly reptiles crawl, and starves 
her there, 



Till 



flesh. This 



she will eat strange 

woful story 
So did I overact in my sick dreams. 
That I imagined . . . no, it cannot be ! 
Horrible things have been in this wild 

world. 
Prodigious mixtures, and confusions 

strange 
Of good and ill; and worse have been 

conceived 
Than ever there was found a heart to do. 
But never fancy imaged such a deed 
As . . . (Pauses, suddenly recollecting 
herself.) 
Who art thou? Swear to me, ere I 

die 
With fearful expectation, that indeed 
Thou art not what thou seemest . . . 

Mother ! 
Lucretia. Oh ! 

My sweet child, know you . . . 

Beatrice. Yet speak it not: 

For then if this be truth, that other too 
Must be a truth, a firm enduring truth, 
Linkt with each lasting circumstance of 

life. 
Never to change, never to pass away. 
Why so it is. This is the Cenci Palace; 
Thou art Lucretia; I am Beatrice. 
I have talkt some wild words, but will 

no more. 
Mother, come near me : from this point 

of time, 
lam . . . (Her voice dies aivay faintly .) 
Lucretia. Alas ! What has befallen 

thee, child? 
What has thy father done? 

Beatrice. What have I done? 

Am I not innocent? Is it my crime 
That one with white hair and imperious 

brow. 
Who tortured me from my forgotten 

years 
As parents only dare, should call himself 
My father, yet should be! — Oh, what 

am I? 
What name, what place, what memory 

shall be mine? 
What retrospects, outliving even despair? 
Lucretia. He is a violent tyrant, 

surely, child: 
We know that death alone can make us 

free; 



326 



THE CENCI. 



His death or ours. But what can he 

have done 
Of deadUer outrage or worse injury? 
Thou art unlike thyself; thine eyes shoot 

forth 
A wandering and strange spirit. Speak 

to me, 
Unlock those pallid hands whose fingers 

twine 
With one another. 

Beatrice. 'T is the restless life 

Tortured within them. If I try to speak 
I shall go mad. Ay, something must be 

done; 
What, yet I know not . . . something 

which shall make 
The thing that I have suffered but a 

shadow 
In the dread lightning which avenges it; 
Brief, rapid, irreversible, destroying 
The consequence of what it cannot cure. 
Some such thing is to be endured or 

done : 
When I know what, I shall be still and 

calm, 
And never any thing will move me more. 
But now ! — O blood, which art my 

father's blood. 
Circling thro' these contaminated veins, 
If thou, poured forth on the polluted 

earth. 
Could wash away the crime, and punish- 
ment 
By which I suffer . . . no, that cannot 

be! 
Many might doubt there were a God 

above 
Who sees and permits evil, and so die: 
That faith no agony shall obscure in me. 
Lucretia. It must indeed have been 

some bitter wrong; 
Yet what, I dare not guess. Oh, my 

lost child, 
Hide not in proud impenetrable grief 
Thy sufferings from my fear. 

Beatrice. I hide them not. 

What are the words which you would 

have me speak? 
I, who can feign no image in my mind 
Of thnt which has transformed me: I, 

whose thought 
Is like a ghost shrouded and folded up 
In its own formless horror : of all words 



That minister to mortal intercourse. 

Which wouldst thou hear ? For there is 
none to tell 

My misery : if another ever knew 

Aught like to it, she died as I will die, 

And left it, as I must, without a name. 

Death ! Death ! Our law and our reli- 
gion call thee 

A punishment and a reward . . . Oh, 
which 

Have I deserved? 

Lucretia. The peace of innocence; 

Till in your season you be called to 
heaven. 

Whate'er you may have suffered, you 
have done 

No evil. Death must be the punish- 
ment 

Of crime, or the reward of trampling 
down 

The thorns which God has strewed upon 
the path 

Which leads to immortality. 

Beatrice. Ay, death ... 

The punishment of crime. I pray thee, 
God, 

Let me not be bewildered while I judge. 

If I must live day after day, and keep 

These limbs, the unworthy temple of thy 
spirit. 

As a foul den from which what thou 
abhorrest 

May mock thee, unavenged ... it shall 
not be ! 

Self-murder ... no, that might be no 
escape, 

For thy decree yawns like a Hell between 

Our will and it : — Oh ! In this mortal 
world 

There is no vindication and no law 

Which can adjudge and execute the doom 

Of that thro' which I suffer. 
Enter Orsino. 

(She approaches him solemnly.) Wel- 
come, Friend ! 

I have to tell you that, since last we met, 

I have endured a wrong so great and 
strange. 

That neither life nor death can give me 
rest. 

Ask me not what it is, for there are deeds 

Which have no form, sufferings which 
have no tongue. 



THE CENCI. 



327 



Orsino. And what is he who has thus 

injured you? 
Beatrice. The man they call my 

father: a dread name. 
Orsino. It cannot be . , . 
Beatrice. What it can be, or not, 

Forbear to think. It is, and it has been; 
Advise me how it shall not be again. 
I thought to die; but a religious awe 
Restrains me, and the dread lest death 

itself 
Might be no refuge from the conscious- 
ness 
Of what is yet unexpiated. Oh, speak ! 
Orsino. Accuse him of the deed, and 
let the law 
Avenge thee. 

Beatrice. Oh, ice-hearted counsellor ! 
If I could find a word that might make 

known 
The crime of my destroyer; and that 

done. 
My tongue should like a knife tear out 

the secret 
Which cankers my heart's core ; ay, lay 

all bare 
So that my unpolluted fame should be 
With vilest gossips a stale mouthed 

story; 
A mock, a bye-word, an astonishment : — 
If th • were done, which never shall be 

done, 
Think of the offender's gold, his dreaded 

hate, 
And the strange horror of the accuser's 

tale. 
Baffling belief, and overpowering speech; 
Scarce whispered, unimaginable, wrapt 
In hideous hints . . . Oh, most assured 
redress ! 
Orsino. You will endure it then? 
Beatrice. Endure ? — Orsino, 

It seems your counsel is small profit. 
( Turns from him, and speaks half to 
herself. ) Ay, 

All must be suddenly resolved and done. 
What is this undistinguishable mist 
Of thoughts which rise, like shadow 

after shadow, 
Darkening each other? 
f Orsino. Should the offender live? 

I Triumph in his misdeed? and make, by 



His crime, whate'er it is, dreadful no 

doubt. 
Thine element; until thou mayest be- 
come 
Utterly lost; subdued even to the hue 
Of that which thou permittest? 

Beatrice (to herself). Mighty death! 
Thou double-visaged shadow? Only 

judge ! 
Rightfullest arbiter ! 

(She retires absorbed in thought.) 
Lucretia. If the lightning 

Of God has e'er descended to avenge . . . 
Orsino. Blaspheme not ! His high 

Providence commits 
Its glory on this earth, and their own 

wrongs 
Into the hands of men; if they neglect 
To punish crime . . . 

Lucretia. But if one, like this wretch. 
Should mock, with gold, opinion, law, 

and power? 
If there be no appeal to that which 

makes 
The guiltiest tremble? If because our 

wrongs, 
For that they are unnatural, strange, and 

monstrous. 
Exceed all measure of belief? O God ! 
If, for the very reasons which should 

make 
Redress most swift and sure, our injurer 

triumphs ? 
And we, the victims, bear worse punish- 
ment 
Than that appointed for their torturer? 
Orsino. Think not 

But that there is redress where there is 

wrong, 
So we be bold enough to seize it. 

Lucretia. How? 

If there were any way to make all sure, 
I know not . . . but I think it might be 

good 
To . . . 

Orsino. Why, his late outrage to 

Beatrice; 
For it is such, as I but faintly guess, 
As makes remorse dishonor, and leaves 

her 
Only one duty, how she may avenge : 
You, but one refuge from ills ill endured; 
Me, but one counsel ... 



728 



THE CENCL 



Liicretia. For we cannot hope 

That aid, or retribution, or resource 
Will arise thence, where every other one 
Might find them with less need. 

(Beatrice advances.') 
Orsino, Then . . . 

Beatrice. Peace, Orsino ! 

And, honored Lady, while I speak, I 

pray 
That you put off, as garments overworn. 
Forbearance and respect, remorse and 

fear. 
And all the fit restraints of daily life. 
Which have been borne from childhood, 

but which now 
Would be a mockery to my holier plea. 
As I have said, I have endured a wrong, 
Which, though it be expressionless, is 

such 
As asks atonement; both for what is 

past. 
And lest I be reserved, day after day. 
To load with crimes an overburdened 

soul, 
And be . . . what ye can dream not. I 

have prayed 
To God, and I have talkt with my own 

heart. 
And have unravelled my entangled wil' 
And have at length determined what is 

right. 
Art thou my friend, Orsino? False or 

true? 
Pledge thy salvation ere I speak. 

Orsino. I swear 

To dedicate my cunning, and my strength. 
My silence, and whatever else is mine, 
To thy commands. 

Lucretia. You think we should de- 
vise 
His death? 

Beatrice. And execute what is de- 
vised, 
And suddenly. We must be brief and 

bold. 
Orsino. And yet most cautious. 
Lucretia. For the jealous laws 

Would punish us with death and infamy 
For that which it became themselves to 

do. 
Beatrice. Be cautious as ye may, but 

prompt. Orsino, 
What arc the means? 



Orsino. I know two dull, 

fierce outlaws, 
Who think man's spirit as a worm's, and 

they 
Would trample out, for any slight caprice, 
The meanest or the noblest life. This 

mood 
Is marketable here in Rome. They sell 
What we now want. 

Lticretia. To-morrow before dawn, 
Cenci will take us to that lonely rock, 
Petrella, in the Apulian Apennines. 
If he arrive there . . . 

Beatrice. He must not arrive. 

Orsino. W^ill it be dark before you 

reach the tower? 
Liicretia. The sun will scarce be set. 
Beatrice. But I remember 

Two miles on this side of the fort, the 

road 
Crosses a deep ravine; 't is rough and 

narrow, 
And winds with short turns down the 

precipice; 
And in its depth there is a mighty rock, 
Which has, from unimaginable years, 
Sustained itself with terror and with 

toil 
Over a gulf, and with the agony 
With which it clings seems slowly coming 

down; 
Even as a wretched soul hour after hour, 
Clings to the mass of life; yet clinging, 

leans; 
And leaning, makes more dark the dread 

abyss 
In which it fears to fall : beneath this 

crag 
Huge as despair, as if in weariness, 
The melancholy mountain yawns . . o 

below, 
You hear but see not an impetuous tor- 
rent 
Raging among the caverns, and a bridge 
Crosses the chasm; and high above there 

grow, 
With intersecting trunks, from crag to 

crag, 
Cedars, and yews, and pines; whose 

tangled hair 
Is matted in one solid roof of shade 
By the dark ivy's twine. At noonday 

here 



THE CENCI. 



329 



^T is twilight, and at sunset blackest 

night. 
Orsino. Before you reach that bridge 

make some excuse 
For spurring on your mules, or loitering 
Until . . . 

Beatrice. "What sound is that? 

Lucretia. Hark ! No, it cannot be a 

servant's step; 
It must be Cenci, unexpectedly 
Returned . . . Make some excuse for 

being here. 
Beatrice ( To Orsino, as she goes otitS) 
That step we hear approach must never 

pass 
The bridge of which we spoke. 

{^Exeunt Lucretia a7id Beatrice. 

Orsino. What shall I do ? 

Cenci must find me here, and I must 

bear 
The imperious inquisition of his looks 
As to what brought me hither: let me 

mask 
Mine own in some inane and vacant 

smile. 
Enter GlACOMO, in a hurried manner. 
How! Have you ventured hither? Know 

you then 
That Cenci is from home ? 

Giacomo. I sought him here; 

And now must wait till he returns. 

Orsino. Great God ! 

Weigh you the danger of this rashness? 

Giacofno. Ay ! 

Does my destroyer know his danger? 

We 
Are now no more, as once, parent and 

child. 
But man to man; the oppressor to the 

opprest; 
The slanderer to the slandered; foe to 

foe : 
He has cast Nature off, which was his 

shield, 
And Nature casts him off, who is her 

shame ; 
And I spurn both. Is it a father's 

throat 
Which I will shake, and say, I ask not 

gold; 
I ask not happy years; nor memories 
Of tranquil childhood; nor home-shel- 
tered love; 



Tho' all these hast thou torn from me, 

and more; 
But only my fair fame; only one hoard 
Of peace, which I thought hidden from 

thy hate. 
Under the penury heapt on me by thee, 
Or I will . . . God can understand and 

pardon. 
Why should I speak with man ? 

Orsino. Be calm, dear friend. 

Giacovw. Well, I will calmly tell you 

what he did. 
This old Francesco Cenci, as you know. 
Borrowed the dowry of my wife from me, 
And then denied the loan; and left me so 
In poverty, the which I sought to mend 
By holding a poor office in the state. 
It had been promist to me, and already 
I bought new clothing for my ragged 

babes, 
And my wife smiled; and my heart 

knew repose. 
When Cenci's intercession, as I found. 
Conferred this office on a wretch, whom 

thus 
He paid for vilest service. I returned 
With this ill news, and we sate sad to- 
gether 
Solacing our despondency with tears 
Of such affection and unbroken faith 
As temper life's worst bitterness; when 

he. 
As he is wont, came to upbraid and curse, 
Mocking our poverty, and telling us 
Such was God's scourge for disobedient 

sons. 
And then, that I might strike him dumb 

with shame, 
I spoke of my wife's dowry; but he 

coined 
A brief yet specious tale, how I had 

wasted 
The sum in secret riot; and he saw 
My wife was toucht, and he went smil- 
ing forth. 
And when I knew the impression he had 

made. 
And felt my wife insult with silent scorn 
My ardent truth, and look averse and 

cold, 
I went forth too : but soon returned again; 
Yet not so soon but that my wife had 

taught 



330 



THE CENCL 



My children her harsh thoughts, and 

they all cried, 
" Give us clothes, father ! Give us better 

food! 
What you in one night squander were 

enough 
For months!" I lookt, and saw that 

home was hell. 
And to that hell will I return no more 
Until mine enemy has rendered up 
Atonement, or, as he gave life to me 
I will, reversing nature's law . . . 

Or si no. Trust me. 

The compensation which thou seekest 

here 
Will be denied. 

Giaconio. Then . . . Are you 

not my friend? 
Did you not hint at the alternative. 
Upon the brink of which you see I stand. 
The other day when we conversed to- 
gether? 
My wrongs were then less. That word 

parricide, 
Altho' I am resolved, haunts me like 

fear. 
Orsino. It must be fear itself, for the 

bare word 
Is hollow mockery. Mark, how wisest 

God 
Draws to one point the threads of a just 

doom, 
So sanctifying it : what you devise 
Is, as it were, accomplisht. 

Giacomo. Is he dead? 

Orsino. His grave is ready. Know 

that since we met 
Cenci has done an outrage to his daughter. 
Giaconio. What outrage? 
Orsino. That she speaks 

not, but you may 
Conceive such half conjectures as I do, 
From her fixt paleness, and the lofty 

grief 
Of her stern brow bent on the idle 

air, 
And her severe unmodulated voice, 
Drowning both tenderness and dread; 

and last 
From this; that whilst her step-mother 

and I, 
Bewildered in our horror, talked to- 
gether 



With obscure hints; both self-misunder- 
stood 
And darkly guessing, stumbling, in our 

talk, 
Over the truth, and yet to its revenge, 
She interrupted us, and with a look 
Which told before she spoke it, he must 
die : . . . 
Giaconio. It is enough. My doubts 
are well appeased; 
There is a higher reason for the act 
Than mine; there is a holier judge than 

me, 
A more unblamed avenger. Beatrice, 
Who in the gentleness of thy sweet 

youth 
Hast never trodden on a worm, or bruised 
A living flower, but thou hast pitied it 
With needless tears ! Fair sister, thou 

in whom 
Men wondered how such loveliness and 

wisdom 
Did not destroy each other ! Is there 

made 
Ravage of thee? O heart, I ask no 

more 
Justification ! Shall I wait, Orsino, 
Till he return, and stab him at the door? 
Orsino. Not so; some accident 
might interpose 
To rescue him from what is now most sure ; 
And you are unprovided where to fly. 
How to excuse or to conceal. Nay, 

listen : 
All is contrived; success is so assured 
That . . . 

Enter Beatrice. 
Beatrice, 'T is my brother's voice ! 

You know me not? 
Giaconio. My sister, my lost sister ! 
Beatrice. Lost indeed ! 

I see Orsino has talkt with you, and 
That you conjecture things too horrible 
To speak, yet far less than the truth. 

Now, stay not. 
He might return: yet kiss me; I shall 

know 
That then thou hast consented to his 

death. 
Farewell, farewell ! Let piety to God, 
Brotherly love, justice and clemency, 
And all things that make tender hardes*^ 
hearts 



THE CENCI, 



2>'}^ 



Make thine hard, brother. Answer 
not . . . farewell. 

\_Exemit severally. 

SCENE II. — A MEAN Apartment in 
GiACOMO's House. Giacomo alone. 

Giaconio. 'T is midnight, and Orsino 

comes not yet. 
[ ThiDickr, and the sound of a slor/n. 
What ! can the everlasting elements 
Feel with a worm like man? If so the 

shaft 
Of mercy-winged lightning would not 

fall 
On stones and trees. My wife and 

children sleep : 
They are now living in unmeaning 

dreams : 
But I must wake, still doubting if that 

deed 
Be just which was most necessary. Oh, 
Thou unreplenished lamp ! whose narrow 

fire 
Is shaken by the wind, and on whose 

edge 
Devouring darkness hovers ! Thou small 

flame, 
Which, as a dying pulse rises and falls. 
Still flickerest up and down, how very 

soon, 
Did I not feed thee, wouldst thou fail 

and be 
As thou hadst never been ! So wastes 

and sinks 
Even now, perhaps, the life that kindled 

mine : 
But that no power can fill with vital oil 
That broken lamp of flesh. Ha ! 't is 

the blood 
Which fed these veins that ebbs till all 

is cold: 
It is the form that moulded mine that 

sinks 
Into the v/hite and yellow spasms of 

death: 
It is the soul by which mine was arrayed 
In God's immortal likeness which now 

stands 
Naked before Heaven's judgment seat ! 

{^A bell stj-ikes.) One! Two! 

The hours crawl on; and when my hairs 

are white, 



My son will then perhaps be waiting 

thus. 
Tortured between just hate and vain 

remorse; 
Chiding the tardy messenger of news 
Like those which I expect. I almost 

wish 
He be not dead, although my wrongs 

are great ; 
Yet ... 't is Orsino's step . . . 
Enter Orsino. 

Speak ! 
Orsino. I am come 

To say he has escaped. 

Giacomo. Escaped ! 

Orsino. And safe 

Within Petrella. He past by the spot 
Appointed for the deed an hour too soon. 
Giacomo. Are we the fools of such 

contingencies? 
And do we waste in blind misgivings thus 
The hours when we should act? Then 

wind and thunder, 
Which seemed to howl his knell, is the 

loud laughter 
With which Heaven mocks our weak- 
ness ! I henceforth 
Will ne'er repent of aught designed or 

done 
But my repentance. 

Orsino. See, the lamp is out. 

Giacomo. If no remorse is ours 

when the dim air 
Has drank this innocent flame, why 

should we quail 
When Cenci's life, that light by which 

ill spirits 
See the worst deeds they prompt, shall 

sink for ever? 
No, I am hardened. 

Orsino. Why, what need of this? 

Who feared the pale intrusion of remorse 
In a just deed? Altho' our first plan 

failed. 
Doubt not but he will soon be laid to 

rest. 
But light the lamp; let us not talk i' 

the dark. 
Giacomo (flighting the lamp'). And 

yet once quencht I cannot thus 

relume 
My father's life: do you not think his 

ghost 



332 



THE CENCL 



Might plead that argument with God? 

Orsino. Once gone 

You cannot now recall your sister's 

peace; 
Your own extinguisht years of youth 

and hope; 
Nor your wife's bitter words; nor all 

the taunts 
Which, from the prosperous, weak mis- 
fortune takes; 
Nor your dead mother; nor . . . 

Giacomo. O, speak no more ! 

I am resolved, although this very hand 
Must quench the life that animated it. 
Orsino. There is no need of that. 

Listen : you know 
Olimpio, the castellan of Petrella 
In old Colonna's time; him whom your 

father 
Degraded from his post? And Marzio, 
That desperate wretch, whom he deprived 

last year 
Of a reward of blood, well earned and 

due ? 
Giacomo. I knew Olimpio; and they 

say he hated 
Old Cenci so, that in his silent rage 
His lips grew white only to see him pass. 
Of Marzio I know nothing. 

Orsino. Marzio's hate 

Matches Olimpio's. I have sent these 

men, 
But in your name, and as at your request, 
To talk with Beatrice and Lucretia. 
Giacomo. Only to talk? 
Orsino. The moments 

which even now 
Pass on\Vard to to-morrow's midnight 

hour 
May memorize their flight with death : 

ere then 
They must have talkt, and may perhaps 

have done. 
And made an end . . . 

Giacomo. Listen ! What 

sound is that ? 
Orsino. The house-dog moans, and 

the beams crack: nought else. 
Giacomo. It is my wife complaining 

in her sleep: 
I doubt not she is saying bitter things 
Of me; and all my children round her 

dreaming 



That I deny them sustenance. 

Orsino. Whilst he \ 

Who truly took it from them, and who I 

fills |j 

Their hungry rest with bitterness, now jl 

sleeps \ 

Lapt in bad pleasures, and triumph- \ 

antly ; 

Mocks thee in visions of successful hate ' 

Too like the truth of day. . 

Giacomo. If e'er he wakes 

Again, I will not trust to hireling 
hands ... 
Orsino. Why, that were well. I must 
be gone; good-night: 
When next we meet — may all be done ! 
Giacomo. And all 

Forgotten : Oh, that I had never been ! 

{^Exeunt. 

END OF THE THIRD ACT. 



ACT IV. 

SCENE I. — An Apartment in the 
Castle of Petrella. Enter Cenci. 

Cenci. She comes not; yet I left her 
even now 

Vanquisht and faint. She knows the 
penalty 

Of her delay: yet what if threats are 
vain? 

Ami not now within Petrella's moat ? 

Or fear I still the eyes and ears of Rome ? 

Might I not drag her by the golden hair ? 

Stamp on her? Keep her sleepless till 
her brain 

Be overworn? Tame her with chains 
and famine ? 

Less would suffice. Yet so to leave un- 
done 

What I most seek ! No, 't is her stubborn 
will 

Which by its own consent shall stoop as 
low 

As that which drags it down. 
Enter LucRETiA. 

Thou loathed wretch ! 

Hide thee from my abhorrence; fly, be- 
gone ! 

Yet stay ! Bid Beatrice come hither. 



THE CENCT. 



333 



Liter etia. Oh, 

Husband ! I pray for thine own wretched 

sake 
Heed what thou dost. A man who walks 

like thee 
Thro' crimes, and thro' the danger of his 

crimes. 
Each hour may stumble o'er a sudden 

grave. 
And thou art old; thy hairs are hoary 

gray; 
As thou wouldst save thyself from death 

and hell. 
Pity thy daughter; give her to some 

friend 
In marriage : so that she may tempt thee 

not 
To hatred, or worse thoughts, if worse 

there be. 
Cenci. What ! like her sister who has 

found a home 
To mock my hate from with prosperity ? 
Strange ruin shall destroy both her and 

thee 
And all that yet remain. My death may 

be 
Rapid, her destiny outspeeds it. Go, 
Bid her come hither, and before my mood 
Be changed, lest I should drag her by 

the hair. 
Lticrefia. She sent me to thee, hus- 
band. At thy presence 
She fell, as thou dost know, into a trance ; 
And in that trance she heard a voice which 

said, 
" Cenci must die ! Let him confess him- 
self ! 
Even now the accusing Angel waits to 

hear 
If God, to punish his enormous crimes. 
Harden his dying heart ! " 

Cenci. Why — such 

things are . . . 
No doubt divine revealings may be made. 
'T is plain I have been favored from 

above, 
For when I curst my sons they died. — 

Ay . . . so . . . 
As to the right or wrong that 's talk . . . 

repentance . , . 
Repentance is an easy moment's work. 
And more depends on God than me. 

Well . . . well . . . 



I must give up the greater point, which 
was 

To poison and corrupt her soul. 

\^A pause ; LUCRETIA approaches anx- 
iously, and then shrinks back as 
he speaks. 

One, two; 

Ay . . . Rocco and Cristofano my curse 

Strangled: and Giacomo, I think, will 
find 

Life a worse Hell than that beyond the 
grave : 

Beatrice shall, if there be skill in hate. 

Die in despair, blaspheming : to Ber- 
nardo, 

He is so innocent, I will bequeath 

The memory of these deeds, and make 
his youth 

The sepulchre of hope, where evil 
thoughts 

Shall grow like weeds on a neglected 
tomb. 

When all is done, out in the wide Cam- 
pagna, 

I will pile up my silver and my gold; 

My costly robes, paintings, and tapes- 
tries; 

My parchments and all records of my 
wealth. 

And make a bonfire in my joy, and leave 

Of my possessions nothing but my name ; 

Which shall be an inheritance to strip 

Its wearer bare as infamy. That done, 

My soul, which is a scourge, will I re- 
sign 

Into the hands of him who wielded it; 

Be it for its own punishment or theirs, 

He will not ask it of me till the lash 

Be broken in its last and deepest wound; 

Until its hate be all inflicted. Yet, 

Lest death outspeed my purpose, let me 
make 

Short work and sure ... [ Going. 

Lticretia. (S/ops him.) Oh, stay ! 
It was a feint : 

She had no vision, and she heard no 
voice. 

I said it but to awe thee. 

Cenci. That is well. 

Vile palterer with the sacred truth of 
God, 

Be thy soul choked with that blaspheming 
lie! 



334 



THE CENCI. 



For Beatrice wors^ terrors are in store 
To bend her to my will. 

Lucretia. Oh! to what will? 

What cruel sufferings more than she has 

known 
Canst thou inflict? 

Cenci. xA.ndrea ! Go call my daughter, 
And if she comes not tell her that I 

come. 
What sufferings? I will drag her, step 

by step. 
Thro' infamies unheard of among men : 
She shall stand shelterless in the broad 

noon 
Of public scorn, for acts blazoned 

abroad, 
One among which shall be . . . What ? 

Canst thou guess? 
She shall become (for what she most 

abhors 
Shall have a fascination to entrap 
Her loathing will) to her own conscious 

self 
All she appears to others; and when dead. 
As she shall die unshrived and unfor- 

given, 
A rebel to her father and her God, 
Her corpse shall be abandoned to the 

hounds; 
Her name shall be the terror of the 

earth; 
Her spirit shall approach the throne of 

God 
Plague-spotted with my curses. I will 

make 
Body and soul a monstrous lump of ruin. 
Enter Andrea. 
Andrea. The Lady Beatrice . . . 
Cenci. Speak, pale 

slave ! What 
Said she? 

Andrea. My Lord, 't was what she 

lookt; she said: 
" Go tell my father that I see the gulf 
Of Hell between us two, which he may 

pass, 
I will not." [.fi'x// Andrea. 

Cenci. Go thou quick, Lucretia, 

Tell her to come; yet let her understand 
Her coming is consent: and say, more- 
over, 
That if she come not I will curse her. 

\^Exit Lucretia. 



Ha? 
With what but with a father's curse doth 

God 
Panic-strike armed victory, and make 

• pale 
Cities in their prosperity? The world's 

Father 
Must grant a parent's prayer against his 

child 
Be he who asks even what men call me. 
Will not the deaths of her rebellious 

brothers 
Awe her before I speak? For I on them I 
Did imprecate quick ruin, and it came. 

Enter Lucretia. 
Well; what? Speak, wretch ! 

Lucretia. She said, 

" I cannot come; 
Go tell my father that I see a torrent 
Of his own blood raging between us." 

Cenci (^kneeling). God! 

Hear me ! If this most specious mass - 

of flesh, I 

Which thou hast made my daughter; ( 

this my blood, \ 

This particle of my divided being; 
Or rather, this my bane and my disease, 
Whose sight infects and poisons me; 

this devil 
Which sprung from me as from a hell, 

was meant 
To aught good use; if her bright loveli- 
ness 
Was kindled to illumine this dark 

world ; 
If nurst by thy selectest dew of love 
Such virtues blossom in her as should 

make 
The peace of life, I pray thee for my 

sake. 
As thou the common God and Father 

art 
Of her, and me, and all; reverse that 

doom ! 
Earth, in the name of God, let her food 

be 
Poison, until she be encrusted round 
With leprous stains ! Heaven, rain upon 

her head 
The blistering drops of the Maremma's 

dew, 
Till she be speckled like a toad; parch 

up 



THE CEiVCI. 



335 



Those love-enkindled lips, warp those 
fine limbs 

To loathed lameness ! All-beholding 
sun, 

Strike in thine envy those life-darting 
eyes 

With thine own blinding beams ! 

Lucretia. Peace ! Peace ! 

For thine own sake unsay those dread- 
ful words. 

When high God grants he punishes such 
prayers. 
Cenci Qeapiug t(p, and throwing his 
right hand tozuards Heaven ) . He 
does his will, I mine ! This in 
addition. 

That if she have a child . . . 

Lucretia. Horrible thought ! 

Cenci. That if she ever have a child; 
and thou. 

Quick Nature ! I adjure thee by thy 
God, 

That thou be fruitful in her, and in- 
crease 

And multiply, fulfilling his command. 

And my deep imprecation ! May it be 

A hideous likeness of herself, that as 

From a distorting mirror, she may see 

Her image mixt with what she most 
abhors. 

Smiling upon her from her nursing 
breast. 

And that the child may from its infancy 

Grow, day by day, more wicked and 
deformed, 

Turning her mother's love to misery: 

And that both she and it may live 
until 

It shall repay her care and pain with 
hate, 

Or what may else be more unnatural. 

So he may hunt her through the clamor- 
ous scoffs 

Of the loud world to a dishonored 
grave. 

Shall I revoke this curse? Go, bid her 
come. 

Before my words are chronicled in 
Heaven. 

{Exit Lucretia. 

I do not feel as if I were a man, 

But like a fiend appointed to chastise 



The offences of some unremembered 

world. 
My blood is running up and down my 

veins; 
A fearful pleasure makes it prick and 

tingle : 
I feel a giddy sickness of strange awe; 
My heart is beating with an expectation 
Of horrid joy. 

Enter Lucretia. 

What.? Speak! 
Lucretia. She bids thee curse; 

And if thy curses, as they cannot do, 
Could kill her soul . . . 

Cenci. She would not 

come. 'T is well, 
I can do both : first take what I demand, 
And then extort concession. To thy 

chamber ! 
Fly ere I spurn thee : and beware this 

night 
That thou cross not my footsteps. It 

were safer 
To come between the tiger and his prey. 
\_Exit Lucretia. 
It must be late; mine eyes grow weary 

dim 
W^ith unaccustomed heaviness of sleep. 
Conscience ! Oh, thou most insolent of 

lies ! 
They say that sleep, that healing dew of 

Heaven, 
Steeps not in balm the foldings of the 

brain 
Which thinks thee an impostor. I will 

SO 
First to belie thee with an hour of rest, 

Which will be deep and calm, I feel: 

and then . . . 
O, multitudinous Hell, the fiends will 

shake 
Thine arches with the laughter of their 

joy! 
There shall be lamentation heard in 

Heaven 
As o'er an angel fallen; and upon 

Earth 
All good shall droop and sicken, and ill 

things 
Shall with a spirit of unnatural life 
Stir and be quickened . . . even as I 

am now. \^Exit, 



33^ 



THE CENCI. 



SCENE II. — Before the Castle of 
Petrella. Enter Beatrice a7id 
LuCRETiA above on the Ratnparts. 

Beatrice. They come not yet. 
Lucretia. 'T is scarce midnight. 

Beatrice. How slow 

Behind the course of thought, even sick 

with speed, 
Lags leaden-footed time ! 

Lucretia. The minutes pass . . . 

If he should wake before the deed is 

done? 

Beatrice. O mother ! He must never 

wake again. 

What thou hast said persuades me that 

our act 
Will but dislodge a spirit of deep hell 
Out of a human form. 

Lucretia. 'T is true he spoke 

Of death and judgment with strange 

confidence 
For one so wicked; as a man believing 
In God, yet recking not of good or ill. 
And yet to die without confession ! . . . 
Beatrice. Oh ! 

Believe that Heaven is merciful and 

just. 
And will not add our dread necessity 
To the amount of his offences. 

E.nter Olimpio and Marzio, below. 
Lucretia. See, 

They come. 

Beatrice. All mortal things must 

hasten thus 
To their dark end. Let us go down. 

\Exeunt Lucretia and Bea- 
trice from above. 
Olimpio. How feel you to this work? 
Marzio. As one who thinks 

A thousand crowns excellent market 

price 
For an old murderer's life. Your cheeks 
are pale. 
Olimpio. It is the white reflection of 
your own. 
Which you call pale. 

Marzio. Is that their natural hue? 
Olimpio. Or 't is my hate and the 
deferred desire 
To wreak it, which extinguishes their 
blood. 



Marzio. You are inclined then to 

this business? 
Olimpio. Ay. 

If one should bribe me with a thousand 

crowns 
To kill a serpent which had stung my 

child, 
I could not be more willing. 
Enter Beatrice and Lucretia, below. 

Noble ladies ! 
Beatrice. Are ye resolved? 
Olimpio. Is he asleep? 

Marzio. Is all 

Quiet? 

Lucretia. I mixt an opiate with 

his drink : 
He sleeps so soundly . . . 

Beatrice. That his death will be 

But as a change of sin-chastising dreams, 
A dark continuance of the Hell within 

him. 
Which God extinguish ! But ye are 

resolved? 
Ye know it is a high and holy deed? 
Olimpio. We are resolved. 
Marzio. As to the how this act 

Be warranted it rests with you. 

Beatrice. Well, follow ! 

Olimpio. Hush ! Hark ! What noise 

is that? 
Marzio. Ha ! some one comes ! 

Beatrice. Ye conscience - stricken 
cravens, rock to rest 
Your baby hearts. It is the iron gate. 
Which ye left open, swinging to the wind. 
That enters whistling as in scorn. Come, 

follow ! 
And be your steps like mine, light, 
quick and bold. 

\^Exe2ittt. 

SCENE III. — An Apartment in the 
Castle Enter Beatrice and 

Lucretia. 

Litcretia. They are about it now. 
Beatrice. Nay, it is done. 

Lucretia. I have not heard him groan. 
Beatrice. He will not groan. 

Lucretia. What sound is that? 
Beatrice. List ! 't is the 

tread of feet 
About his bed. 



THE CENCI. 



337 



Lucretia. My God ! 

If he be now a cold stiff corpse . . . 

Beatrice. O, fear not 

What may be done, but what is left 

undone : 
The act seals all. 

Enter Olimpio and Marzio. 

Is it accomplished? 
Marzio. What ? 

Olimpio. Did you not call? 
Beatrice. When ? 

Olimpio. Now. 

Beatrice. I ask if all is over? 

Olimpio. We dare not kill an old 
and sleeping man; 
His thin gray hair, his stern and reverent 

brow, ^ 

His veined hands crosst on his heaving 

breast, 
And the calm innocent sleep in which 

he lay, 
Quelled me. Indeed, indeed, I cannot 
do it. 
Marzio. But I was bolder; for I chid 
Olimpio, 
And bade him bear his wrongs to his 

own grave 
And leave me the reward. And now 

my knife 
Toucht the loose wrinkled throat, when 

the old man 
Stirred in his sleep, and said, "God! 

hear, O, hear, 
A father's curse ! What, art thou not 

our father? " 
And then he laught. I knew it was 

the ghost 
Of my dead father speaking through his 

lips, 
And could not kill him. 

Beatrice. Miserable slaves ! 

Where, if ye dare not kill a sleeping man. 
Found ye the boldness to return to me 
With such a deed undone? Base pal- 

terers ! 
Cowards and traitors ! Why, the very 

conscience 
Which ye would sell for gold and for 

revenge 
Is an equivocation : it sleeps over 
A thousand daily acts disgracing men; 
And when a deed where mercy insults 
Heaven . . . 



Why do I talk? 

\_Snatching a dagger from one of them 
and raisifig it. 

Hadst thou a tongue to say, 
She murdered her own father, I must 

do it! 
But never dream, ye shall outlive him 
long ! 
Olinifio. Stop, for God's sake ! 
Marzio. I will go back and 

kill him. 
Olimpio. Give me the weapon, we 

must do thy will. 

Beatrice. Take it ! Depart ! Return ! 

[Exeunt Olimpio and Marzio, 

How I ale thou art ! 

We do but that which 't were a deadly 

crime 
To leave undone. 

Lucretia. Would it were done ! 

Beatrice. Even whilst 

That doubt is passing through your 

mind, the world 
Is conscious of a change. Darkness 

and Hell 
Have swallowed i.p the vapor they sent 

forth • 

To blacken the sweet light of life. My 

breath 
Comes, methinks, lighter, and the jellied 

blood 
Runs freely thro' my veins. Hark ! 
Enter Olimpio and Marzio. 

He is . . . 

Olimpio. Dead ! 

Marzio. We strangled him that 

there might be no blood; 

And then we threw his heavy corpse i' 

the garden 
Under the balcony; 't will seem it fell. 
Beatrice {^giving them a bag of coin ) . 
Here, take this gold, and hasten 
to your homes. 
And, Marzio, because thou wast only awed 
By that which made me tremble, wear 
thou this ! 

[ Clothes him in a rich mantle. 
It was the mantle which my grandfather 
Wore in his high prosperity, and men 
Envied his state : so may they envy 

thine. 
Thou wert a weapon in the hand of 
God 



338 



THE CENCI. 



To a just use. Live long and thrive ! 

And, mark, 
If thou hast crimes, repent : this deed 
is none. 

\^A horn is sounded. 
Lucretia. Hark, 't is the castle horn; 
my God ! it sounds 
Like the last trump. 

Beatrice. Some tedious guest 

is coming. 
Lucretia, The drawbridge is let 
down; there is a tramp 
Of horses in the court; fly, hide your- 
selves ! 
\_Exeunt Olimpio and Marzio. 
Beatrice. Let us retire to counterfeit 
deep rest; 
I scarcely need to counterfeit it now : 
The spirit which doth reign within these 

limbs 
Seems strangely undisturbed. I could 

even sleep 
Fearless and calm: all ill is surely past. 

[ Exeunt. 

SCENE IV.* — Another Apartment 
IN THE Castle. Enter on one side 
the Legate Savella, introduced 
by a Servant^ ajid on the other 
Lucretia and Bernardo. 

Savella. Lady, my duty to his Holiness 
Be my excuse that thus unseasonably 
I break upon your rest. I must speak 

with 
Count Cenci; doth he sleep? 

Lucretia {in a hurried and confused 

manner^. I think he sleeps; 

Yet wake him not, I pray, spare me 

awhile. 
He is a wicked and a wrathful man; 
Should he be roused out of his sleep 

to-night, 
Which is, I know, a hell of angry 

dreams. 
It were not well; indeed it were not well. 
Wait till day break . . . {aside) O, I am 

deadly sick ! 
Savella. I grieve thus to distress you, 

but the Count 
Must answer charges of the gravest 

import. 
And suddenly; such my commission is. 



Lucretia {with increased agitation). 

I dare not rouse him: I know 

none who dare . . . 
'T were perilous; . . . you might as 

safely waken 
A serpent; or a corpse in which some 

fiend 
Were laid to sleep. 

Savella. Lady, my moments here 

Are counted. I must rouse him from 

his sleep, 
Since none else dare. 

Lucretia {aside). O, terror! O, de- 
spair ! 
( To Bernardo) Bernardo, conduct you 

the Lord Legate to 
Your father's cl^^mber. 

\_Exeu)it Savella and Bernardo. 
Enter Beatrice. 
Beatrice. 'T is a messenger 

Come to arrest the culprit who now 

stands 
Before the throne of unappealable God. 
Both Earth and Heaven, consenting 

arbiters. 
Acquit our deed. 

Lucretia. Oh, agony of fear ! 

Would that he yet might live ! Even 

now I heard 
The Legate's followers whisper as they 

past 
They had a warrant for his instant death. 
All was prepared by unforbidden means 
Which we must pay so dearly, having 

done. 
Even now they search the tower, and 

find the body; 
Now they suspect the truth; now they 

consult 
Before they come to tax us with the 

fact ; 
O, horrible, 't is all discovered ! 

Beatrice. Mother, 

What is done wisely, is done well. Be 

bold 
As thou art just. 'T is like a truant 

child 
To fear that others know what thou hast 

done, 
Even from thine own strong conscious- 
ness, and thus 
Write on unsteady eyes and altered 

cheeks 



THE CENCI. 



339 



All thou wouldst hide. Be faithful to 

thyself, 
And fear no other witness but thy fear. 
For if, as cannot be, some circumstance 
Should rise in accusation, we can blind 
Suspicion with such cheap astonishment. 
Or overbear it with such guiltless pride, 
As murderers cannot feign. The deed 

is done, 
And what may follow now regards not 

me. 
I am as universal as the light; 
Free as the earth -surrounding air; as firm 
As the world's centre. Consequence, 

to me. 
Is as the wind which strikes the solid 

rock 
But shakes it not. 

\_A oy ivithin and tumult. 
Voices. Murder ! Murder ! Murder ! 
Enter Bernardo and Savella. 
Savella {to his foiloivers). Go search 
the castle round; sound the 
alarm; 
Look to the gates that none escape ! 
Beatrice. What now? 

Bernardo. I know not what to 

say . . . my father's dead. 
Beatrice. How; dead ! he only sleeps; 
you mistake, brother. 
His sleep is very calm, very like death; 
'T is wonderful how well a tyrant 

sleeps. 
He is not dead? 

Bernardo. Dead; murdered. 

Lucretia {with extreme agitation^. 
Oh no, no. 
He is not murdered though he may be 

dead; 
I have alone the keys of those apartments. 
Savella. Ha ! Is it so ? 
Beatrice. My Lord, I 

pray excuse us; 
We will retire; my mother is not well: 
She seems quite overcome with this 
strange horror. 
\_Exeunt Lucretia and Beatrice. 
Savella. Can you suspect who may 

have murdered him? 
Bernardo. I know not what to 

think. 
Savella. Can you name any 

Who had an interest in his death? 



Bernardo. Alas ! 

I can name none who had not, and those 

most 
Who most lament that such a deed is 

done; 
My mother, and my sister, and myself. 
Savella. 'T is strange ! There were 
clear marks of violence. 
I found the old man's body in the moon- 
light 
Hanging beneath the window of his 

chamber. 
Among the branches of a pine : he 

could nof 
Have fallen there, for all his limbs lay 

heapt 
And effortless; 't is true there was no 

blood ... 
Favor me. Sir; it much imports your 

house 
That all should be made clear; to tell 

the ladies 
That I request their presence. 

\^Exit Bernardo. 

Enter Guards bringing in Marzio. 

Guard. We have one. 

Officer. My Lord, we found this 

ruffian and another 

Lurking among the rocks; there is no 

doubt 
But that they are the murderers of Count 

■ Cenci: 
Each had a bag of coin ; this fellow wore 
A gold-inwoven robe, which shining 

bright 
Under the dark rocks to the glimmering 

moon 
Betrayed them to our notice : the othei 

fell 
Desperately fighting. 

Savella. What does he confess? 

Officer. He keeps firm silence; but 
these lines found on him 
May speak. 

Savella. Their language is at least 
sincere. \_Reads. 

"To the Lady Beatrice. — That 
the atonement of what my nature sickens 
to conjecture may soon arrive, I send 
thee, at thy brother's desire, those who 
will speak and do more than I dare 
write. . . . Thy devoted servant, 

"Orsino." 



340 



THE CENCL 



Enter LucRETiA, Beatrice, and 
Bernardo. 
Knowest thou this writing, Lady? 
Beatrice. No. 

Savella. Nor thou? 

Lucretia. {I/er conduct throughout the 
scene is marked by extreme agita- 
tion.^ Where was it found? 
What is it ? It should be 
Orsino's hand ! It speaks of that strange 

horror 
Which never yet found utterance, but 

which made 
Between that hapless child and her dead 

father 
A gulf of obscure hatred. 

Savella. Is it so? 

Is it true. Lady, that thy father did 
Such outrages as to awaken in the^ 
Unfilial hate ? 

Beatrice. Not hate, 't was more than 
hate: 
This is most true, yet wherefore question 
me? 
Savella. There is a deed demanding 
question done; 
Thou hast a secret which will answer 
not. 
Beatrice. What sayest? My Lord, 

your words are bold and rash. 
Savella. I do arrest all present in 
the name 
Of the Pope's Holiness. You must to 
Rome. 
Lucretia. O, not to Rome ! Indeed 

we are not guilty. 
Beatrice. Guilty ! Who dares talk 
of guilt? My Lord, 
I am more innocent of parricide 
Than is a child born fatherless. . . . 

Dear mother. 
Your gentleness and patience are no 

shield 
For this keen-judging world, this two- 
edged lie. 
Which seems, but is not. What ! will 

human laws, 
Rather will ye who are their ministers. 
Bar all access to retribution first, 
And then, when Heaven doth interpose 

to do 
What ye neglect, arming familiar things 
To the redress of an unwonted crime. 



Make ye the victims who demanded it 
Culprits? 'T is ye are culprits! That 

poor wretch 
Who stands so pale, and trembling, and 

amazed. 
If it be true he murdered Cenci, was 
A sword in the right hand of justest 

God. 
Wherefore should I have wielded it? 

Unless 
The crimes which mortal tongue dare 

never name 
God therefore scruples to avenge. 

Savella. You own 

That you desired his death? 

Beatrice. It would have been 

A crime no less than his, if for one 

moment 
That fierce desire had faded in my heart. 
'T is true I did believe, and hope, and 

pray. 
Ay, I even knew . . . for God is wise 

and just. 
That some strange sudden death hung 

over him. 
'T is true that this did happen, and 

most true 
There was no other rest for me on earth, 
No other hope in Heaven . . . now what 

of this? 
Savella. Strange thoughts beget 

strange deeds; and here are 

both: 
I judge thee not. 

Beatrice. And yet, if you arrest 

me, 
You are the judge and executioner 
Of that which is the life of life: the 

breath 
Of accusation kills an innocent name. 
And leaves for lame acquittal the poor 

life 
Which is a mask without it. 'T is most 

false 
That I am guilty of foul parricide; 
Although I must rejoice, for justest 

cause. 
That other hands have sent my father's 

soul 
To ask the mercy he denied to me. 
Now leave us free; stain not a noble 

house 
With vague surmises of rejected crime; 



THE CENCI. 



341 



Add to our sufferings and your own 

neglect 
No heavier sum: let them have been 

enough : 
Leave us the wreck we have. 

Savclla. I dare not, Lady. 

I pray that you prepare yourselves for 

Rome : 
There the Pope's further pleasure will 
be known. 
Lucretia. O, not to Rome ! O, take 

us not to Rome ! 
Beat?-ice. Why not to Rome, dear 
mother? There as here 
Our innocence is as an armed heel 
To trample accusation. God is there 
As here, and with his shadow ever 

clothes 
The innocent, the injured and the weak; 
And such are we. Cheer up, dear 

Lady, lean 
On me; collect your wandering thoughts. 

My Lord, 
As soon as you have taken some refresh- 
ment, 
And had all such examinations made 
Upon the spot, as may be necessary 
To the full understanding of this matter, 
We shall be ready. Mother; will you 
come? 
Lucretia. Ha ! they will bind us to 
the rack, and wrest 
Self-accusation from our agony ! 
Will Giacomo be there? Orsino? 

Marzio? 
All present; all confronted; all demand- 
ing 
Each from the other's countenance the 

thing 
Which is in every heart ! O, misery ! 

\_ She faints, and is borne out. 
Savclla. She faints: an ill appear- 
ance this. 
Beatrice. My Lord, 

She knows not yet the uses of the 

world. 
She fears that power is as a beast which 

grasps 
And loosens not : a snake whose look 

transmutes 
All things to guilt which is its nutriment. 
She cannot know how well the supine 
slaves 



Of blind authority read the truth of 

ihings 
When written on a brow of guilelessness : 
She sees not yet triumphant Innocence 
Stand at the judgment-seat of mortal 

man, 
A judge and an accuser of the wrong 
Which drags it there. Prepare yourself, 

my Lord; 
Our suite will join yours in the court be- 
low. \^Exeunt.- 

END OF THE FOURTH ACT. 



ACT V. 

SCENE I. — An Apartment in Or- 
siNO's Palace. Enter Orsino and 
Giacomo. 

Giacomo. Do evil deeds thus quickly 
come to end? 

O, that the vain remorse which must 
chastise 

Crimes done, had but as loud a voice to 
warn 

As its keen sting is mortal to avenge ! 

O, that the hour when present had cast 
off 

The mantle of its mystery, and shown 

The ghastly form with which it now re- 
turns 

When its scared game is roused, cheering 
the hounds 

Of conscience to their prey ! Alas ! Alas ! 

It was a wicked thought, a piteous deed. 

To kill an old and hoary-headed father. 
Orsino. It has turned out unluckily, 

in truth. 
Giacomo. To violate the sacred doors 
of sleep; 

To cheat kind nature of the placid death 

Which she prepares for overwearied age; 

To drag from Heaven an unrepentant 
soul 

Which might have quencht in reconcil- 
ing prayers 

A life of iDurning crimes . . , 

Orsino. You cannot say 

I urged you to the deed. 

Giacomo. O, had I never 

Found in thy smooth and ready coun- 
tenance 



342 



THE CENCI. 



The mirror of my darkest thoughts; 

hadst thou 
Never with hints and questions made me 

look 
Upon the monster of my thought, until 
It grew familiar to desire . . . 

Orsino. 'T is thus 

Men cast the blame of their unprosper- 

ous acts 
Upon the abettors of their own resolve; 
Or anything but their weak, guilty selves. 
And yet, confess the truth, it is the peril 
In which you stand that gives you this 

pale sickness 
Of penitence; confess 't is fear disguised 
From its own shame that takes the man- 
tle now 
Of thin remorse. What if we yet were 
safe? 
Giacomo. How can that be ? Already 
Beatrice, 
Lucretia and the murderer are in prison. 
I doubt not officers are, whilst we speak, 
Sent to arrest us. 

Orsino. I have all prepared 

For instant flight. We can escape even 

now. 
So we take fleet occasion by the hair. 
Giaco/no. Rather expire in tortures, 
as I may. 
What ! will you cast by self-accusing 

flight 
Assured conviction upon Beatrice? 
She, who alone in this unnatural work. 
Stands like God's angel ministered upon 
By fiends; avenging such a nameless 

wrong 
As turns black parricide to piety; 
Whilst we for basest ends ... I fear, 

Orsino, 
While I consider all your words and 

looks. 
Comparing them with your proposal now, 
That you must be a villain. For what 

erid 
Could you engage in such a perilous 

crime, 
Training me on with hints, and signs, 

and smiles. 
Even to this gulf? Thou art no liar? No, 
Thou art a lie ! Traitor and murderer ! 
Coward and slave ! But, no, defend 
thyself; [D^'awing. 



Let the sword speak what the indignant 

tongue 
Disdains to brand thee with. 

Orsino, Put up your weapon. 

Is it the desperation of your fear 
Makes you thus rash and sudden with a 

friend, 
Now ruined for your sake? If honest 

anger 
Have moved you, know that what I just 

proposed 
Was but to try you. As for me, I think. 
Thankless affection led me to this point, 
From which, if my firm temper could 

repent, 
I cannot now recede. Even whilst we 

speak 
The ministers of justice wait below : 
They grant me these brief inoments. 

Now if you 
Have any word of melancholy comfort 
To speak to your pale wife, 't were best 

to pass 
Out at the postern, and avoid them so, ■ 
Giacomo. O, generous friend ! How 

canst thou pardon me? 
Would that my life could purchase thine ! 
Orsitio, That wish 

Now comes a day too late. Haste; fare 

thee well ! 
Hear'st thou not steps along the corridor ! 
{^Exit Giacomo. 
I 'm sorry for it; but the guards are wait- 
ing 
At his own gate, and such was my con- 
trivance 
That I might rid me both of him and 

them. 

I thought to act a solemn comedy 
Upon the painted scene of this new 

world. 
And to attain my own peculiar ends 
By some such plot of mingled good and 

ill 
As others weave; but there arose a 

Power 
Which graspt and snapt the threads of 

my device 
And turned it to a net of ruin . . . Ha! 
[.-/ shout is heard. 
Is that my name I hear proclaimed 

abroad ? 
But I will pass, wrapt in a vile disguise; 



THE CENCL 



343 



Rags on my back, and a false innocence 
Upon my face, thro' the misdeeming 

crowd 
Which judges by what seems. 'T is easy 

then 
For a new name and for a country new, 
And a new life, fashioned on old desires. 
To change the honors of abandoned 

Rome. 
And these must be the masks of that 

within. 
Which must remain unaltered . . . Oh, 

I fear 
That what is past will never let me rest ! 
Why, when none else is conscious, but 

myself. 
Of my misdeeds, should my own heart's 

contempt 
Trouble me? Have I not the power to 

fly 

My own reproaches? Shall I be the 
slave 

Of . . . what? A word? which those 
of this false world 

Employ against each other, not them- 
selves; 

As men wear daggers not for self-offence. 

But if I am mistaken, where shall I 

Find the disguise to hide me from myself, 

As now I skulk from every other eye? 

\_Exit. 

SCENE II. —A Hall of Justice. 
Camillo, Judges, etc, are discovered 
seated ; Marzio is led in. 

First Judge. Accused, do you persist 
in your denial? 
I ask you, are you innocent, or guilty? 
I demand who were the participators 
In your offence? Speak truth and the 
whole truth, 
Marzio. My God! I did not kill 
him; I know nothing; 
Olimpio sold the robe to me from which 
You would infer my guilt. 

Second Judge. Away with him ! 

First Jtidge. Dare you, with lips yet 
white from the rack's kiss 
Speak false? Is it so soft a questioner. 
That you would bandy lovers' talk with it 
Till it wind out your life and soul? 
Away ! 



Marzio. Spare me ! O, spare ! I 

will confess. 
First Judge. Then speak. 

Marzio. I strangled him in his sleep. 
First Judge. Who urged you to it ? 
Marzio. His own son, Giacomo, and 
the young prelate 
Orsino sent me to Petrella; there 
The ladies Beatrice and Lucretia 
Tempted me with a thousand crowns, 

and I 
And my companion forthwith murdered 

him. 
Now let me die. 

First Judge. This sounds as bad as 
truth. Guards, there, 
Lead forth the prisoner ! 

Enter LuCRETIA, BEATRICE, and 

Giacomo, guarded. 

Look upon this man; 
When did you see him last? 
Beatrice. We never saw him. 
Marzio. You know me too well. Lady 

Beatrice. 
Beatrice. I know thee ! How r 

where? when? 
Alarzio. You know 't was I 

Whom you did urge with menaces and 

bribes 
To kill your father. When the thing was 

done 
You clothed me in a robe of woven gold 
And bade me thrive : how I have thriven, 

you see. 
You, my Lord Giacomo, Lady Lucretia, 
You know that what I speak is true. 
[Beatrice advances tozvards hi/n ; he 
covers his face, and shrinks back. 

O, dart 
The terrible resentment of those eyes 
On the dead earth ! Turn them away 

from me ! 
They wound : 't was torture forced the 

truth. My Lords, 
Having said this let me be led to death. 
Beatrice. Poor wretch, I pity thee: 

yet stay awhile. 
Camillo. Guards, lead him not 

away. 
Beatrice. Cardinal Camillo, 

You have a good repute for gentleness 
And wisdom: can it be that you sit here 
To countenance a wicked farce like this? 



344 



THE CEJVCL 



When some obscure and trembling slave 

is dragged 
From sufferings which might shake the 

sternest heart 
And bade to answer, not as he believes, 
But as those may suspect or do desire 
Whose questions thence suggest their own 

reply : 
And that in peril of such hideous tor- 
ments 
As merciful God spares even the damned. 

Speak now 
The thing you surely know, which is that 

you, 
If your fine frame were stretched upon 

that wheel, 
And you were told: "Confess that you 

did poison 
Your little nephew; that fair blue-eyed 

child 
Who was the lodestar of your life: " — 

and tho' 
All see, since his most swift and piteous 

death, 
That day and night, and heaven and earth, 

and time 
And all the things hoped for or done 

therein 
Are changed to you, thro' your exceeding 

grief, 
Yet you would say, "I confess any- 
thing: " 
And beg from your tormentors, like that 

slave, 
The refuge of dishonorable death. 
I pray thee, Cardinal, that thou assert 
My innocence. 

Cav'-illo (^??nich nioved^. What shall 

we think, my Lords? 
Shame on these tears ! I thought the 

heart was frozen 
Which is their fountain. I would pledge 

my soul 
That she is guiltless. 

Judge. Yet she must be tortured. 

Camillo. I would as soon have tor- 
tured mine own nephew 
(If he now lived he would be just her 

age; 
His hair, too, was her color, and his eyes 
Like hers in shape, but blue and not so 

deep) 
As that most perfect image of God's love 



That ever came sorrowing upon the earth. 
She is as pure as speechless infancy ! 
Judge. Well, be her purity on your 
head, my Lord, 
If you forbid the rack. His Holiness 
Enjoined us to pursue this monstrous 

crime 
By the severest forms of law; nay even 
To stretch a point against the criminals. 
The prisoners stand accused of parricide 
Upon such evidence as justifies 
Torture. 

Beatrice. What evidence? This 

man's? 
Judge. Even so. 

Beatrice (^to Marzio^. Come near. 
And who art thou thus chosen forth 
Out of the multitude of living men 
To kill the innocent? 

Marzio. I am Marzio, 

Thy father's vassal. 

Beatrice. Fix thine eyes on mine; 
Answer to what I ask. 

[ Ttirning to the Judges. 
I prithee marl^^ ^ 
His countenance : unlike bold calumny 
Which sometimes dares not speak the 

thing it looks, 
He dares not look the thing he speaks, 

but bends 
His gaze on the blind earth. 

( 7\^ Marzio.) What ! wilt thou say 
That I did murder my own father? 

JMarzio. Oh ! 

Spare me ! My brain swims round . . . 

I cannot speak . . . 
It was that horrid torture forced the truth. 
Take me away ! Let her not look on 

me ! 
I am a guilty miserable wretch; 
I have said all I know; now, let nie die ! 
Beatrice. My Lords, if by my nature 
I had been 
So stern, as to have planned the crime 

alleged. 
Which your suspicions dictate to this 

slave, 
And the rack makes him utter, do you 

think 
I should have left this two-edged instru- 
ment 
Of my misdeed; this man, this bloody 
knife 



THE CENCL 



345 



With my own name engraven on the 

heft, 
Lying unsheathed amid a world of foes, 
For my own death? That with such 

horrible need 
For deepest silence, I should have neg- 
lected 
So trivial a precaution, as the making 
His tomb the keeper of a secret written 
On a thief's memory? What is his poor 

life? 
What are a thousand lives? A parricide 
Had trampled them like dust; and, see, 

he lives ! 
(^Tut'ning to MxYiZio.^ And thou . . . 
Marzio. Oh, spare me ! 

Speak to me no more ! 
That stern yet piteous look, those solemn 

tones. 
Wound worse than torture. 

( To the Judges.') I have told it all; 
For pity's sake lead me away to death. 
Ca))nllo. Guards, lead him nearer 

the Lady Beatrice, 
He shrinks from her regard like autumn's 

leaf 
From the keen breath of the serenest 

north. 
Beatrice. O thou who tremblest on 

the giddy verge 
Of life and death, pause ere thou answer- 

est me; 
So mayst thou answer God with less dis- 
may : 
What evil have we done thee? I, alas ! 
Have lived but on this earth a few sad 

years 
And so my lot was ordered, that a father 
First turned the moments of awakening 

life 
To drops, each poisoning youth's sweet 

hope; and then 
Stabbed with one blow my everlasting 

soul; 
And my untainted fame; and even that 

peace 
Which sleeps within the core of the 

heart's heart; 
But the wound was not mortal; so my 

hate 
Became the only worship I could lift 
To our great Father, who in pity and 

love. 



Armed thee, as thou dost say, to cut him 

off; 
And thus his wrong becomes my accusa- 
tion; 
And art thou the accuser? If thou 

hopest 
Mercy in heaven, show justice upon 

earth : 
Worse than a bloody hand is a hard 

heart. 
If thou hast done murders, made thy. 

life's path 
Over the trampled laws of God and man. 
Rush not before thy Judge, and say: 

" My maker, 
I have done this and more; for there 

was one 
Who was most pure and innocent on 

earth; 
And because she endured what never 

any 
Guilty or innocent endured before : 
Because her wrongs could not be told, 

not thought; 
Because thy hand at length did rescue 

her; 
I with my words killed her and all her 

kin." 
Think, I adjure you, what it is to slay 
The reverence living in the minds of 

men 
Towards our ancient house, and stainless 

fame ! 
Think what it is to strangle infant pity. 
Cradled in the belief of guileless looks, 
Till it become a crime to suffer. Think 
What 't is to blot with infamy and blood 
All that which shows like innocence, and 

is. 
Hear me, great God ! I swear, most 

innocent. 
So that the world lose all discrimination 
Between the sly, fierce, wild regard of 

guilt, 
And that which now compels thee to 

reply 
To what I ask: Am I, or am I not 
A parricide ? 

Jllarzio. Thou art not ! 

Judge. What is this? 

Marzio. I here declare those whom 

I did accuse 
Are innocent. 'Tis I alone am guilty. 



346 



THE CEIVCI. 



Judge. Drag him away to torments; 
let them be 
Subtle and long drawn out, to tear the 

folds 
Of the heart's inmost cell. Unbind him 

not 
Till he confess. 

Marzio. Torture me as ye will : 

A keener pain has wrung a higher truth 
From my last breath. She is most inno- 
cent ! 
Bloodhounds, not men, glut yourselves 

well with me; 
I will not give you that fine piece of 

nature 
To rend and ruin. 

\^Exit Marzio, guarded. 
Ca?nillo. What say ye now, 

my Lords? 
yudge. Let tortures strain the truth 
till it be white 
As snow thrice sifted by the frozen wind. 
Camillo. Yet stained with blood. 
Judge {to Beatrice). Know you 

this paper, Lady? 
Beatrice. Entrap me not with ques- 
tions. Who stands here 
As my accuser? Ha! wilt thou be he. 
Who art my judge? Accuser, witness, 

judge. 
What, all in one ? Here is Orsino's name ; 
Where is Orsino? Let his eye meet mine. 
What means this scrawl? Alas! ye 

know not what, 
And therefore on the chance that it may 

be 
Some evil, will ye kill us? 

Enter an Officer. 
Officer, Marzio's dead. 

Judge. What did he say? 
Officer. Nothing. As soon as we 

Had bound him on the wheel, he smiled 

on us, 
As one who bafTles a deep adversary; 
And holding his breath, died. 

Judge. There remains nothing 

But to apply the question to those pris- 
oners. 
Who yet remain stubborn. 

Camillo. I overrule 

Further proceedings, and in the behalf 
Of these most innocent and noble per- 
sons 



Will use my interest with the Holy 

Father. 
Judge. Let the Pope's pleasure then 

be done. Meanwhile 
Conduct these culprits each to separate 

cells; 
And be the engines ready: for this 

night 
If the Pope's resolution be as grave. 
Pious, and just as once, I '11 wring the 

truth 
Out of those nerves and sinews, groan 

by groan. \_Exeunt. 

SCENE HL— The Cell of a Prison. 
Beatrice is discovered asleep on a 
couch. Enter Bernardo. 

Bernardo. How gently slumber rests 

upon her face. 
Like the last thoughts of some day 

sweetly spent 
Closing in night and dreams, and so pro- 
longed. 
After such torments as she bore last 

night. 
How light and soft her breathing comes. 

Ay, me ! 
Methinks that I shall never sleep again. 
But I must shake the heavenly dew of rest 
From this sweet folded flower, thus . . . 

wake ! awake ! 
What, sister, canst thou sleep? 

Beatrice {awaking^. I was just 

dreaming 
That we were all in Paradise. Thou 

knowest 
This cell seems like a kind of Paradise 
After our father's presence. 

Bernardo. Dear, dear sister. 

Would that thy dream were not a dream ! 

O God ! 
How shall I tell? 

Beatrice. What wouldst thou 

tell, sweet brother? 
Bernardo. Look not so calm and 

happy, or even whilst 
I stand considering what I have to say 
My heart will break. 

Beatrice. See now, thou 

mak'st me weep: 
How very friendless thou wouldst b«, 

dear child, 



THE CENCT. 



347 



If I were dead. Say what thou hast to 

say. 
Bernardo. They have confest; they 

could endure no more 
The tortures . . . 

Beatrice. Ha ! What was there to 

confess? 
They must have told some weak and 

wicked lie 
To flatter their tormentors. Have they 

said 
That they were guilty? O white inno- 
cence, 
That thou shouldst wear the mask of guilt 

to hide 
Thine awful and serenest countenance 
From those who know thee not ! 

Enter Judge with Lucretia and 
GiACOMO, guarded. 

Ignoble hearts ! 
For some brief spasms of pain, which 

are at least 
As mortal as the limbs through which 

they pass, 
Are centuries of high splendor laid in 

dust? 
And that eternal honor which should live 
Sunlike, above the reek of mortal fame, 
Changed to a mockery and a bye- word? 

What ! 
Will you give up these bodies to be 

dragged 
At horses' heels, so that our hair should 

sweep 
The footsteps of the vain and senseless 

crowd, 
Who, that they may make our calamity 
Their worship and their spectacle, will 

leave 
The churches and the theatres as void 
As their own hearts? Shall the light 

multitude 
Fling, at their choice, curses or faded 

pity, 
Sad funeral flowers to deck a living 

corpse, 
Upon us as we pass to pass away, 
And leave . . . what memory of our 

having been? 
Infamy, blood, terror, despair? O thou, 
Who wert a mother to the parentless, 
Kill not thy child ! Let not her wrongs 

kill thee ! 



Brother, lie down with me upon the rack. 
And let us each be silent as a corpse; 
It soon will be as soft as any grave. 
'T is but the falsehood it can wring from 

fear 
Makes the rack cruel. 

Giaconio. They will tear the 

truth 
Even from thee at last, those cruel pains: 
For pity's sake say thou art guilty now. 
Lucretia. Oh, speak the truth ! Let 

us all quickly die; 
And after death, God is our judge, not 

they; 
He will have mercy on us. 

Bernardo. If indeed 

It can be true, say so, dear sister mine; 
And then the Pope will surely pardon 

you, 
And all be well. 

Judge. Confess, or I will warp 

Your limbs with such keen tortures . . . 

Beatrice. Tortures ! Turn 

The rack henceforth into a spinning 

wheel ! 
Torture your dog, that he may tell when 

last 
He lapt the blood his master shed . . . 

not me ! 
My pangs are of the mind, and of the 

heart. 
And of the soul; ay, of the inmost soul, 
Which weeps within tears as of burning 

gall 
To see, in this ill world where none are 

true. 
My kindred false to their deserted selves; 
And with considering all the wretched 

life 
Which I have lived, and its now wretched 

end. 
And the small justice shown by Heaven 

and Earth 
To me or mine ; and what a tyrant thou 

art. 
And what slaves these; and what a 

world we make, 
The oppressor and the opprest . . . 

such pangs compel 
My answer. What is it thou wouldst 

with me? 
Judge. Art thou not guilty of thy 

father's death? 



348 



THE CENCI. 



Beatrice. Or wilt thou rather tax 
high judging God 
That he permitted such an act as that 
Which I have suffered, and which he 

beheld; 
Made it unutterable, and took from it 
All refuge, all revenge, all consequence. 
But that which thou hast called my 

father's death? 
Which is or is not what men call a crime, 
Which either I have done, or have not 

done; 
Say what ye will. I shall deny no more. 
If ye desire it thus, thus let it be, 
And so an end of all. Now do your 

will; 

No other pains shall force another word. 

Judge. She is convicted, but has not 

contest. 

Be it enough. Until their final sentence 

Let none have converse with them. 

You, young Lord, 
Linger not here ! 

Beatrice. Oh, tear him not away ! 
Judge. Guards, do your duty. 
Bernardo (^ei)ihracing Beatrice). 
Oh ! would ye divide 
Body from soul? 

Ojficcr. That is the headsman's 

business. 

[Exeunt all but Lucretia, 

Beatrice, and Giacomo. 

Giacomo. Have I confest? Is it all 

over now? 

No hope ! No refuge ! O weak, wicked 

tongue 
Which hast destroyed me, would that 

thou hadst been 
Cut out and thrown to dogs first ! To 

have killed 
My father first, and then betrayed my 

sister; 
Ay, thee ! the one thing innocent and 

pure 
In this black guilty world, to that which I 
So well deserve ! My wife ! my little 

ones ! 
Destitute, helpless, and I . . . Father ! 

God! 
Canst thou forgive even the unforgiving, 
When their full hearts break thus, 
thus! . . . 

[ Covers hia face and weeps. 



I iicrctia. O my child ! 

To what a dreadful end are we all come ! 
Why did I yield? Why did I not sustaip. 
Those torments? Oh, that I were all 

dissolved 
Into these fast and unavailing tears. 
Which flow and feel not ! 

Beatrice. What 't was weak to do, 
'T is weaker to lament, once being done; 
Take cheer ! The God who knew my 

wrong, and made 
Our speedy act the angel of his wrath, 
Seems, and but seems, to have aban- 
doned us. 
Let us not think that we shall die for 

this. 
Brother, sit near me; give me your firm 

hand. 
You had a manly heart. Bear up ! Bear 

up ! 
O dearest Lady, put your gentle head 
Upon my lap, and try to sleep awhile : 
Your eyes look pale, hollow and over- 
worn. 
With heaviness of watching and slow 

grief. 
Come, I will sing you some low, sleepy 

tune. 
Not cheerful, nor yet sad; some dull old 

thing. 
Some outworn and unused monotony. 
Such as our country gossips sing and 

spin. 
Till they almost forget they live: lie 

down ! 
So, that will do. Have I forgot the 

words? 
Faith ! They are sadder than I thought 

they were. 

SONG 

False friend, wilt thou smile or weep 
When my life is laid asleep? 
Little cares for a smile or a tear. 
The clay-cold corpse upon the bier ! 

Farewell ! Heigho ! 

What is this whispers low? 
There is a snake in thy smile, my dear; 
And bitter poison within thy tear. 

Sweet sleep, were death like to thee, 
Or if thou couldst mortal be. 



THE CENCI. 



349 



I would close these eyes of pain; 
When to wake? Never again. 

O World ! Farewell ! 

Listen to the passing bell ! 
It says, thou and I must part, 
With a light and a heavy heart. 

[ Hie scene closes. 

SCENE IV. —A Hall of the Prison. 
Enter Camillo and BERNARDO. 

Camillo. The Pope is stern; not to 

be moved or bent. 
He lookt as calm and keen as is the 

engine 
Which tortures and which kills, exempt 

itself 
From aught that it inflicts; a marble 

form, 
A rite, a law, a custom : not a man. 
He frowned, as if to frown had been the 

trick 
Of his machinery, on the advocates 
Presenting the defences, which he tore 
And threw behind, muttering with hoarse, 

harsh voice : 
*' Which among ye defended their old 

father 
Killed in his sleep? " Then to another: 

"Thou 
Dost this in virtue of thy place; 'tis 

well." 
He turned to me then, looking depreca- 
tion. 
And said these three words, coldly : 

"They must die." 
Bernardo. And yet you left him not? 
Camillo. I urged him still; 

Pleading, as I could guess, the devilish 

wrong 
Which prompted your unnatural parent's 

death. 
And he replied: " Paolo Santa Croce 
Murdered his mother yester evening, 
And he is lied. Parricide grows so rife 
That soon, for some just cause no doubt, 

the young 
Will strangle us all, dozing in our chairs. 
Authority, and power, and hoary hair 
Are grown crimes capital. You are my 

nephew, 
You come to ask their pardon; stay a 

moment; 



Here is their sentence; never see me 

more 
Till, to the letter, it be all fulfilled." 
Bernardo. O God, not so ! I did be- 
lieve indeed 
That all you said was but sad prepara- 
tion 
For happy news. Oh, there are words 

and looks 
To bend the sternest purpose ! Once I 

knew them, 
Now I forget them at my dearest need. 
What think you if I seek him out, and 

bathe 
His feet and robe with hot and bitter 

tears ? 
Importune him with prayers, vexing his 

brain 
With my perpetual cries, until in rage 
He strike me with his pastoral cross, 

and trample 
Upon my prostrate head, so that my 

blood 
May stain the senseless dust on which he 

treads. 
And remorse waken mercy? I will do 

it! 
Oh, wait till I return ! {^Rnshes out. 

Camillo. Alas ! poor boy ! 

A wreck-devoted seaman thus might pray 
To the deaf sea. 

Enter LucRETiA, Beatrice, and GiA- 

COMO, guarded. 
Beatrice. I hardly dare to fear 

That thou bring'st other news than a 

just pardon. 
Camillo. May God in heaven be less 

inexorable 
To the Pope's prayers, than he has been 

to mine. 
Here is the sentence and the warrant. 

Beatrice {jvildly~). O 

My God ! Can it be possible I have 
To die so suddenly? vSo young to go 
Under the obscure, cold, rotting, wormy, 

ground ! 
To be nailed down into a narrow place; 
To see no more sweet sunshine; hear no 

more 
Blithe voice of living thing; muse not 

again 
Upon familiar thoughts, sad, yet thus 

lost — 



350 



THE CENCr. 



How fearful ! to be nothing ! Or to 

be . . . 
What? Oh, where am I? Let me not 

go mad ! 
Sweet Heaven, forgive weak thoughts ! 

If there should be 
No God, no Heaven, no Earth in the 

void world; 
The wide, gray, lampless, deep, un- 
peopled world ! 
If all things then should be ... my 

father's spirit, 
His eye, his voice, his touch surrounding 

me; 
The atmosphere and breath of my dead 

life! 
If sometimes, as a shape more like him- 
self, 
Even the form which tortured me on 

earth, 
Maskt in gray hairs and wrinkles, he 

should come 
And wind me in his hellish arms, and 

fix 
His eyes on mine, and drag me down, 

down, down ! 
For was he not alone omnipotent 
On Earth, and ever present? Even tho' 

dead. 
Does not his spirit live in all that breathe. 
And work for me and mine still the same 

ruin. 
Scorn, pain, despair? Who ever yet 

returned 
To teach the laws of death's untrodden 

realm? 
Unjust perhaps as those which drive us 

now. 
Oh, whither, whither? 

Lucretia. Trust in God's sweet 

love. 
The tender promises of Christ : ere 

night. 
Think, we shall be in Paradise. 

Beatrice. 'T is past! 

Whatever comes my heart shall sink no 

more. 
And yet, I know not why, your words 

strike chill : 
How tedious, false and cold seem all 

things. I 
Have met with much injustice in this 

world; 



No difference has been made by God oi 

man, 
Or any power moulding my wretched lot, 
'Twixt good or evil, as regarded me. 
I am cut off from the only world I know, 
From light, and life, and love, in youth's 

sweet prime. 
You do well telling me to trust in God, 
I hope I do trust in him. In whom else 
Can any trust? And yet my heart is 

cold. 
\_During the latter speeches Giacomo 

has retired conversing with 

Camillo, who now goes out ; 

Giacomo advances. 
Giacotno. Know you not. Mother 

. . . Sister, know you not? 
Bernardo even now is gone to implore 
The Pope to grant our pardon. 

Lucretia. Child, perhaps 

It will be granted. We may all then 

live 
To make these woes a tale for distant 

years : 
Oh, what a thought ! It gushes to my 

heart 
Like the warm blood. 

Beatrice. Yet both will soon 

be cold. 
Oh, trample out that thought ! Worse 

than despair. 
Worse than the bitterness of death, is 

hope: 
It is the only ill which can find place 
Upon the giddy, sharp and narrow hour 
Tottering beneath us. Plead with the 

swift frost 
That it should spare the eldest flower of 

spring : 
Plead with awakening earthquake, o'er 

whose couch 
Even now a city stands, strong, fair, and 

free; 
Now stench and blackness yawn, like 

death. Oh, plead 
With famine, or wind-walking Pesti- 
lence, 
Blind lightning, or the deaf se», not 

with man ! 
Cruel, cold, formal man; righteous in 

words. 
In deeds a Cain. No, Mother, we must 

die: 



THE CENCI. 



351 



Since such is the reward of innocent 

lives; 
Such the alleviation of worst wrongs. 
And whilst our murderers live, and hard, 

cold men, 
Smiling and slow, walk thro' a world of 

tears 
To death as to life's sleep; 't were just 

the grave 
Were some strange joy for us. Come, 

obscure Death, 
And wind me in thine all-embracing 

arms ! 
Like a fond mother hide me in thy 

bosom, 
And rock me to the sleep from which 

none wake. 
Live ye, who live, subject to one another 
As we were once, who now . . . 

[Bernardo rushes in. 

Bernardo. Oh, horrible. 

That tears, that looks, that hope poured 

forth in prayer. 
Even till the heart is vacant and despairs. 
Should all be vain ! The ministers of 

death 
Are waiting round the doors. I thought 

I saw 
Blood on the face of one . . . What if 

't were fancy? 
Soon the heart's blood of all I love on 

earth 
Will sprinkle him, and he will wipe it 

off 
As if 't were only rain. O life ! O world ! 
Cover me ! let me be no more ! To see 
That perfect mirror of pure innocence 
Wherein I gazed, and grew happy and 

good. 
Shivered to dust ! To see thee, Beatrice, 
Who made all lovely thou didst look 

upon . . . 
Thee, light of life . . . dead, dark ! 

while I say, sister. 
To hear I have no sister; and thou, 

Mother, 
Whose love was as a bond to all our 

loves . . . 
Dead ! The sweet bond broken ! 
Enter Camillo ajid Guards. 

They come ! Let me 
Kiss those warm lips before their crim- 
son leaves 



Are blighted . , . white . . . cold. 

Say farewell, before 
Death chokes that gentle voice ! Oh, 

let me hear 
You speak ! 

Beatrice. Farewell, my tender 

brother. Think 
Of our sad fate with gentleness, as now : 
And let mild, pitying thoughts lighten 

for thee 
Thy sorrow's load. Err not in harsh 

despair. 
But tears and patience. One thing more, 

my child. 
For thine own sake be constant to the 

love 
Thou bearest us; and to the faith that I, 
Tho' wrapt in a strange cloud of crime 

and shame, 
Lived ever holy and unstained. And 

tho' 
111 tongues shall wound me, and our 

common name 
Be as a mark stampt on thine innocent 

brow 
For men to point at as they pass, do 

thou 
Forbear, and never think a thought un- 
kind 
Of those, who perhaps love thee in their 

graves. 
So mayest thou die as I do; fear and 

pain 
Being subdued. Farewell ! Farewell ! 

Farewell ! 
Bernardo. I cannot say, farewell ! 
Camillo. O Lady Beatrice ! 

Beatrice. Give yourself no unneces- 
sary pain, 
My dear Lord Cardinal. Here, Mother, 

tie 
My girdle for me, and bind up this hair 
\\\ any simple knot; ay, that does well. 
And yours I see is coming down. How 

often 
Have we done this for one another; 

now 
We shall not do it any more. My 

Lord, 
We are quite ready. Well, 't is very 

well. 

THE END. 



352 



NOTE ON THE CENCT. 



NOTE ON "THE CENCI," BY 
MRS. SHELLEY. 

The sort of mistake that Shelley made 
as to the extent of his own genius and 
powers, which led him deviously at first, 
but lastly into the direct track that 
enabled him fully to develop them, is a 
curious instance of his modesty of feel- 
ing, and of the methods which the 
human mind uses at once to deceive 
itself, and yet, in its very delusion, to 
make its way out of error into the path 
which Nature has marked out as its right 
one. He often incited me to attempt 
the writing a tragedy : he conceived that 
I possessed some dramatic talent, and 
he was always most earnest and ener- 
getic in his exhortations that I should 
cultivate any talent I possessed, to the 
utmost. I entertained a truer estimate 
of my powers; and above all (though at 
that time not exactly aware of the fact) 
I was far too young to have any chance 
of succeeding, even moderately, in a 
species of composition that requires a 
greater scope of experience in, and sym- 
pathy with, human passion than could 
then have fallen to my lot, — or than 
any perhaps, except Shelley, ever pos- 
sessed, even at the age of twenty-six, at 
which he wrote "The Cenci." 

On the other hand, Shelley most errone- 
ously conceived himself to be destitute of 
this talent. He believed that one of the 
first requisites was the capacity of form- 
ing and following-up a story or plot. He 
fancied himself to be defective in this 
portion of imagination : it was that which 
gave him least pleasure in the writings 
of others, though he laid great store by 
it as the proper framework to support 
the sublimest efforts of poetry. He 
asserted that he was too metaphysical 
and abstract, too fond of the theoretical 
and th? id^al, to succeed as a tragedian. 
It perhaps is not strange that I shared 
this opinion with himself; for he had 
hitherto shown no inclination for, nor 
given any specimen of his powers in 
framing and supporting the interest of a 
story, either in prose or verse. Once or 



twice, when he attempted such, he had 
speedily thrown it aside, as being even 
disagreeable to him as an occupation. 

The subject he had suggested for a 
tragedy was Charles L : and he had 
written to me: "Remember, remember 
Charles L I have been already imagin- 
ing how you would conduct some scenes. 
The second volume of St. Leon begins 
with this proud and true sentiment : 
' There is nothing which the human mind 
can conceive which it may not execute.' 
Shakespeare was only a human being." 
These words were written in 1818, while 
we were in Lombardy, when he little 
thought how soon a work of his own 
would prove a proud comment on the pas- 
sage he quoted. When in Rome, in 1819, 
a friend put into our hands the old man- 
uscript account of the story of the Cenci. 
We visited the Colonna and Doria pal- 
aces, where the portraits of Beatrice 
were to be found; and her beauty cast 
the reflection of its own grace over her 
appalling story. Shelley's imagination 
became strongly excited, and he urged 
the subject to me as one fitted for a 
tragedy. More than ever I felt my in- 
competence; but I entreated him to 
write it instead; and he began, and pro- 
ceeded swiftly, urged on by intense sym- 
pathy with the sufferings of the human 
beings whose passions, so long cold in 
the tomb, he revived, and gifted with 
poetic language. This tragedy is the 
only one of his works that he communi- 
cated to me during its progress. We 
talked over the arrangement of the scenes 
together. I speedily saw the great mis- 
take we had made, and triumphed in the 
discovery of the new talent brought to 
light from that mine of wealth (never, 
alas, through his untimely death, worked 
to its depths) — his richly gifted mind. 

We suffered a severe affliction in Rome 
by the loss of our eldest child, who was 
of such beauty and promise as to cause 
him deservedly to be the idol of our 
hearts. We left the capital of the world, 
anxious for a time to escape a spot asso- 
ciated too intimately with his presence 
and loss.^ Some friends of ours were 

1 Such feelings haunted him when, in "The 



NOTE ON THE CENCI. 



353 



residing in the neighborhood of Leghorn, 
and we took a small house, Villa Valso- 
vano, about half-way between the town 
and Monte Nero, where we remained 
during the summer. Our villa was sit- 
uated in the midst of a podere ; the 
peasants sang as they worked beneath 
our windows, during the heats of a very 
hot season, and in the evening the water- 
wheel creaked as the process of irrigation 
went on, and the fire-fiies flashed from 
among the myrtle hedges: Nature was 
bright, sunshiny, and cheerful, or diver- 
sified by storms of a majestic terror, such 
as we had never before witnessed. 

At the top of the house there was a 
sort of terrace. There is often such in 
Italy, generally roofed: this one was 
very small, yet not only roofed but 
glazed. This Shelley made his study; 
it looked out on a wide prospect of fer- 
tile country, and commanded a view of 
the near sea. The storms that some- 
times varied our day showed themselves 
inost picturesquely as they were driven 
icross the ocean; sometimes the dark 
lurid clouds dipped towards the waves, 
and became water-spouts that churned 
up the waters beneath, as they were 
chased onward and scattered by the tem- 
pest. At other times the dazzling sun- 
light and heat made it almost intolerable 
to every other; but Shelley basked in 
both, and his health and spirits revived 
under their influence. In this airy cell he 
wrote the principal part of "The Cenci." 
He was making a study of Calderon at 
the time, reading his best tragedies with 
an accomplished lady living near us, to 
whom his letter from Leghorn was ad- 
dressed during the following year. He 
admired Calderon, both for his poetry 
and his dramatic genius; but it shows 
his judgment and originality that, though 

Cenci," he makes Beatrice speak to Cardinal 
Camillo of 

"that fair blue-eyed child 
Who was the lodestar of your life " — 
and say, — 

" All see, since his most swift and piteous death. 
That day and night, and heaven and earth, and 

time, 
And all the thing's hoped for or done therein. 
Are changed to you, through your exceeding 

grief." 



greatly struck by his first acquaintance 
with the Spanish poet, none of his peculi- 
arities crept into the composition of "The 
Cenci; " and there is no trace of his new 
studies, except in that passage to which 
he himself alludes as suggested by one in 
" El Purgatorio de San Patricio." 

Shelley wished "The Cenci" to be 
acted. He was not a play-goer, being of 
such fastidious taste that he was easily 
disgusted by the bad filling-up of the 
inferior parts. While preparing for our 
departure from England, however, he 
saw Miss O'Neil several times. She was 
then in the zenith of her glory; and 
Shelley was deeply moved by her imper- 
sonation of several parts, and by the 
graceful sweetness, the intense pathos, 
and sublime vehemence of passion, she 
displayed. She was often in his thoughts 
as he wrote : and, when he had finished, 
he became anxious that his tragedy 
should be acted, and receive the advan- 
tage of having this accomplished actress 
to fill the part of the heroine. With 
this view he wrote the following letter to 
a friend in London : 

" The object of the present letter is to 
ask a favor of you. I have written a 
tragedy on a story well known in Italy, 
and, in my conception, eminently dra- 
matic. I have taken some pains to make 
my play fit for representation, and those 
who have already seen it judge favorably. 
It is written without any of the peculiar 
feelings and opinions which characterize 
my other compositions; I have attended 
simply to the impartial development of 
such characters as it is probable the per- 
sons represented really were, together 
with the greatest degree of popular effect 
to be produced by such a development. 
I send you a translation of the Italian 
MS. on which my play is founded; the 
chief circumstance of which I have 
touched very delicately; for my princi- 
pal doubt as to whether it would succeed 
as an acting play hangs entirely on the 
question as to whether any such a thing 
as incest in this shape, however treated, 
would be admitted on the stage. I think, 
however, it will form no objection; con- 
sidering, first, that the facts are matter 



354 



NOTE ON THE CENCI. 



of history, and, secondly, the peculiar 
delicacy with which I have treated it.i 

"I am exceedingly interested in the 
question of whether this attempt of mine 
will succeed or not. I am strongly in- 
clined to the affirmative at present; found- 
ing my hopes on this — that, as a compo- 
sition, it is certainly not inferior to any 
of the modern plays that have been 
acted, with the exception of " Remorse; " 
that the interest of the plot is incredibly 
greater and more real; and that there is 
nothing beyond what the multitude are 
contented to believe that they can under- 
stand, either in imagery, opinion, or sen- 
timent. I wish to preserve a complete 
incognito, and can trust to you that, 
whatever else you do, you will at least 
favor me on this point. Indeed, this is 
. essential, deeply essential, to its success. 
After it had been acted, and successfully 
(could I hope for such a thing), I would 
own it if I pleased, and use the celebrity 
it might acquire to my own purposes. 

" What I want you to do is to procure 
for me its presentation at Covent Garden. 
The principal character, Beatrice, is pre- 
cisely fitted for Miss O'Neil, and it might 
even seem to have been written for her 
(God forbid that I should see her play it 
— it would tear my nerves to pieces); 
and in all respects it is fitted only for 
Covent Garden. The chief male charac- 
ter I confess I should be very unwilling 
that any one but Kean should play. 
That is impossible, and I must be con- 
tented with an inferior actor." 

The play was accordingly sent to Mr. 
Harris. He pronounced the subject to 
be so objectionable that he could not even 
submit the part to Miss O'Neil for perusal, 
but expressed his desire that the author 
would write a tragedy on some other 
subject, which he would gladly accept. 
Shelley printed a small edition at Leg- 
horn, to insure its correctness; as he 
was much annoyed by the many mistakes 

1 In speaking of his mode of treating this 
main incident, Shelley said that it might be 
remarked that, in the course of the play, he had 
never mentioned expressly Cenci's worst crime. 
Every one knew what it must be, but it was never 
imagined in words — the nearest allusion to it 
being that portion of Cenci's curse beginning — 
"That, if she have a child," etc. 



that crept into his text when distance 
prevented him from correcting the press. 
Universal approbation soon stamped 
"The Cenci " as the best tragedy of 
modern times. Writing concerning it, 
Shelley said: " I have been cautious to 
avoid the introducing faults of youthful 
composition; diffuseness, a profusion of 
inapplicable imagery, vagueness, gener- 
ality, and, as Hamlet says, zvords^ 
wo7-ds.''^ There is nothing that is not 
purely dramatic throughout; and the 
character of Beatrice, proceeding, from 
vehement struggle, to horror, to deadly 
resolution, and lastly to the elevated dig- 
nity of calm suffering, joined to passion- 
ate tenderness and pathos, is touched 
with hues so vivid and so beautiful that 
the poet seems to have read intimately 
the secrets of the noble heart imaged in 
the lovely countenance of the unfortu- 
nate girl. The Fifth Act is a master- 
piece. It is the finest thing he ever 
wrote, and may claim proud comparison 
not only with any contemporary, but 
preceding, poet. The varying feelings 
of Beatrice are expressed with passion- 
ate, heart-reaching eloquence. Every 
character has a voice that echoes truth 
in its tones. It is curious, to one 
acquainted with the written story, to 
mark the success with which the poet 
has inwoven the real incidents of the 
tragedy into his scenes, and yet, through 
the power of poetry, has obliterated all 
that would otherwise have shown too 
harsh or too hideous in the picture. His 
success was a double triumph; and often 
after he was earnestly entreated to write 
again in a style that commanded popular 
favor, while it was not less instinct with 
truth and genius. Btit the bent of his 
mind went the other way; and, even 
when employed on subjects whose inter- 
est depended on character and incident, 
he would start off in another direction, 
and leave the delineations of human 
passion, which he could depict in so able 
a manner, for fantastic creations of his 
fancy, or the expression of those opinions 
and sentiments, with regard to human 
nature and its destmy, a desire to diffuse 
which was the master passion of his soul. 



THE MASK OF ANARCHY. 



355 



THE MASK OF ANARCHY. 



WRITTEN ON THE OCCASION OF THE MASSACRE AT MANCHESTER. 



As I lay asleep in Italy 
There came a voice from over the Sea, 
And with great power it forth led me 
To walk in the visions of Poesy. 



I met Murder on the way — 
He had a mask like Castlereagh — 
Very smooth he looked, yet grim; 
Seven blood-hounds followed him : 

III. 
All were fat; and well they might 
Be in admirable plight. 
For one by one, and two by two. 
He tossed them human hearts to chew 
Which from his wide cloak he drew. 

IV. 

Next came Fraud, and he had on, 
Like Eldon, an ermined gown; 
His big tears, for he wept well. 
Turned to mill-stones as they fell. 



And the little children, who 

Round his feet played to and fro, 

Thinking every tear a gem. 

Had their brains knocked out by them. 

VI. 
Clothed with the Bible, as with light, 
And the shadows of the night, 
Like Sidmouth, next, Hypocrisy 
On a crocodile rode by. 

VII. 

And many more Destructions played 
In this ghastly masquerade. 
All disguised, even to the eyes. 
Like bishops, lawyers, peers, or spies. 



VIII. 



Last came Anarchy: he rode 
On a white horse, splasht with blood; 
He was pale even to the lips. 
Like Death in the Apocalypse. 



IX. 



And he wore a kingly crown; 

And in his grasp a sceptre shone; 

On his brow this mark I saw — 

" I AM God, and King, and Law! " 



X. 



With a pace stately and fast. 
Over English land he past, 
Trampling to a mire of blood 
The adoring multitude. 



XI. 



And a mighty troop around. 

With their trampling shook the ground, 

Waving each a bloody sword, 

For the service of their Lord. 



XII. 



And with glorious triumph, they 
Rode thro' England proud and gay, 
Drunk as with intoxication 
Of the wine of desolation. 



XIII. 



O'er fields and towns, from sea to sea, 
Past the Pageant swift and free. 
Tearing up, and trampling down; 
Till they came to London town. 



XIV. 



And each dweller, panic-stricken. 
Felt his heart with terror sicken 
Hearing the tempestuous cry 
Of the triumph of Anarchy. 



356 



THE MASK OF ANARCHY. 



XV. 



For with pomp to meet him came, 
Clothed in arms like blood and flame, 
The hired murderers, who did sing 
"Thou art God, and Law, and King. 



XVI. 



" We have waited, weak and lone 
For thy coming, Mighty One ! 
Our purses are empty, our swords are cold. 
Give us glory, and blood, and gold." 

XVII. 

Lawyers and priests, a motley crowd, 
To the earth their pale brows bowed; 
Like a bad prayer not over loud, 
Whispering — " Thou art Law and God." 

XVIII. 

Then all cried with one accord, 
"Thou art King, and God, and Lord; 
Anarchy, to thee we bow, 
Be thy name made holy now ! " 

XIX. 

And Anarchy, the Skeleton, 
Bowed and grinned to every one. 
As well as if his education 
Had cost ten millions to the nation. 

XX. 

For he knew the Palaces 
Of our Kings were rightly his; 
His the sceptre, crown, and globe, 
And the gold-inwoven robe. 

XXI. 

So he sent his slaves before 
To seize upon the Bank and Tower, 
And was proceeding with intent 
To meet his pensioned Parliament. 

XXII. 

When one fled past, a maniac maid. 
And her name was Hope, she said: 
But she looked more like Despair, 
And she cried out in the air : 

XXIII. 

" My father Time is weak and gray 
With waiting for a better day; 
See how idiot-like he stands, 
Fumbling with his palsied hands ! 



XXIV. 



" He has had child after child. 
And the dust of death is piled 
Over every one but me — 
Misery ! oh. Misery! " 

XXV. 

Then she lay down in the street. 
Right before the horses' feet. 
Expecting, with a patient eye. 
Murder, Fraud, and Anarchy. 

XXVI. 

When between her and her foes 
A mist, a light, an image rose. 
Small at first, and weak, and frail 
Like the vapor of a vale : 

XXVII. 

Till as clouds grow on the blast, 
Like tower-crowned giants striding fast. 
And glare with lightnings as they fly. 
And speak in thunder to the sky, 

XXVIII. 

It grew — a Shape arrayed in mail 
Brighter than the viper's scale. 
And upborne on wings whose grain 
Was as the light of sunny rain. 

XXIX. 

On its helm, seen far away, 
A planet, like the Morning's, lay; 
And those plumes its light rained thro' 
Like a shower of crimson dew. 

XXX. 

With step as soft as wind it past 
O'er the heads of men — so fast 
That they knew the presence there. 
And lookt, — and all was empty air. 



XXXI. 

As flowers beneath 

waken, 
As stars from Night's 

shaken, 

As waves arise when loud winds call, 
Thoughts sprung where'er that step did 

fall. 



May's footstep 
loose hair are 



THE MASK OF ANARCHY. 



357 



XXXII. 



And the prostrate multitude 
Lookt — and ankle-deep in blood, 
Hope, that maiden most serene, 
Was walking with a quiet mien : 



XXXIII. 



And Anarchy, the ghastly birth. 

Lay dead earth upon the enrth; 

The Horse of Death tameless as wind 

Fled, and with his hoofs did grind 

To dust the murderers thronged behind. 



XXXIV. 



A rushing light of clouds and splendor, 
A sense awakening and yet tender 
Was heard and felt — and at its close 
These words of joy and fear arose 



XXXV. 



As if their own indignant Earth 
Which gave the sons of England birth 
Had felt their blood upon her brow, 
And shuddering with a mother's throe 



XXXVI. 



Had turned every drop of blood 
By which her face had been bedewed 
To an accent unwithstood, — 
As if her heart had cried aloud : 



XXXVII. 



" Men of England, heirs of Glory, 
Heroes of unwritten story. 
Nurslings of one mighty Mother, 
Hopes of her, and one another; 



XXXVIII. 



** Rise like Lions after slumber 
In unvanquishable number. 
Shake your chains to earth like dew 
Which in sleep had fallen on you — 
Ye are many — they are few. 



XXXIX. 



" What is freedom? — Ye can tell 
That which slavery is, too well — 
For its very name has grown 
To an echo of your own. 



XL. 



" 'T is to work and have such pay 
As just keeps life from day to day 
In your limbs, as in a cell 
For the tyrants' use to dwell 



XLl. 



" So that ye for them are made 

Loom, and plough, and sword, and 

spade, 
With or without your own will bent 
To their defence and nourishment. 



XLII. 



" 'T is to see your children weak 
With their mothers pine and peak, 
When the winter winds are bleak, - 
They are dying whilst I speak. 



XLIII. 

" 'T is to hunger for such diet 
As the rich man in his riot 
Casts to the fat dogs that lie 
Surfeiting beneath his eye; 

XLIV. 

" 'T is to let the Ghost of Gold 
Take from Toil a thousandfold 
More than e'er its substance could 
In the tyrannies of old. 

XLV. 

" Paper coin — that forgery 
Of the title deeds, which ye 
Hold to something of the worth 
Of the inheritance of Earth. 

XLVI. 

" 'T is to be a slave in soul 
And to hold no strong control 
Over your own wills, but be 
All that others make of ye. 

XLVII. 

" And at length when ye complain 
With a murmur weak and vain, 
'T is to see the Tyrant's crew 
Ride over your wives and you — 
Blood is on the grass like dew. 



358 



THE MASK OF ANARCHY, 



XLVIII. 



"Then it is to feel revenge 
Fiercely thirsting to exchange 
Blood for blood — and wrong for wrong- 
Do not thus when ye are strong. 



XLIX. 



" Birds find rest, in narrow nest 
When weary of their winged quest; 
Beasts find fare, in woody lair 
When storm and snow are in the air.^ 



L. 



"Asses, swine, have litter spread 
And with fitting food are fed; 
All things have a home but one — 
Thou, O Englishman, hast none ! 



LI. 

" This is Slavery — savage men, 
Or wild beasts within a den 
Would endure not as ye do — 
But such ills they never knew. 

Lll. 

"What art thou Freedom? Oh! could 

slaves 
Answer from their living graves 
This demand — tyrants would flee 
Like a dream's dim imagery : 

LIII. 

" Thou art not, as impostors say, 
A shadow soon to pass away, 
A superstition, and a name 
Echoing from the cave of Fame. 

LIV. 

" For the laborer thou art bread, 
And a comely table spread 
From his daily labor come 
To a neat and happy home. 

1 The following Stanza originally intended to 
come between Stanzas xlix. and t.. was rejected : 

" Horses, oxen, have a home. 
When from daily toil they come ; 
Household dogs, when the wind roars, 
Find a home within warm doors." 



LV. 

"Thou art clothes, and fire, and food 
For the trampled multitude — 
No — in countries that are free 
Such starvation cannot be 
As in England now we see. 

LVI. 

" To the rich thou art a check; 
When his foot is on the neck 
Of his victim, thou dost make 
That he treads upon a snake. • 

LVI I. 

" Thou art Justice — ne'er for gold 
May thy righteous laws be sold 
As laws are in England — thou 
Shield'st alike the high and low. 

LVIII. , 

"Thou art Wisdom — Freemen never 
Dream that God will damn for ever , 

All who think those things untrue 
Of which Priests make such ado. 

LIX. 

" Thou art Peace — never by thee 
Would blood and treasure wasted be 
As tyrants wasted them, when all 
Leagued to quench thy flame in Gaul. 

LX. 

"What if English toil and blood 
Was poured forth, even as a flood? 
It availed, O Liberty, 
To dim, but not extinguish thee. 

» LXI. 

" Thou art Love — the rich have kist 
Thy feet, and like him following Christ 
Give their substance to the free 
And thro' the rough world follow thee, 

LXII. 

" Or turn their wealth to arms, and 

make 
War for thy beloved sake 
On wealth, and war, and fraud — whence J 

they I 

Drew the power which is their prey. 



THE MASK OF ANARCHY. 



359 



LXIII. 



** Science, Poetry, and Thought 
^Are thy lamps; they make the lot 
Of the dwellers in a cot 
So serene, they curse it not. 

LXIV. 

" Spirit, Patience, Gentleness, 

All that can adorn and bless 

Art thou — let deeds not words express 

Thine exceeding loveliness. 

LXV. 

" Let a great Assembly be 

Of the fearless and the free 

On some spot of English ground 

Where the plains stretch wide around. 

LXVI. 

" Let the blue sky overhead, 
The green earth on which ye tread, 
All that must eternal be 
Witness the solemnity. 

LXVII. 

** From the corners uttermost 
Of the bounds of English coast; 
From every hut, village, and town 
Where those who live and suffer moan 
For others' misery or their own, 

LXVIII. 

" From the workhouse and the prison 
Where pale as corpses newly risen. 
Women, children, young and old 
Groan for pain, and weep for cold — 

LXIX. 

"From the haunts of daily life 
Where is waged the daily strife 
With common wants and common cares 
Which sows the human heart with 
tares — 

LXX. 

" Lastly from the palaces 
Where the murmur of distress 
Echoes, like the distant sound 
Of a wind alive, around 



LXXI. 

" Those prison halls of wealth and 

fashion 
Where some few feel such compassion 
For those who groan, and toil, and wail 
As must make their brethren pale — 

LXXII. 

" Ye who suffer woes untold. 
Or to feel, or to behold 
Your lost country bought and sold 
With a price of blood and gold — 

LXXIII. 

" Let a vast assembly be, 

And with great solemnity 

Declare with measured words that ye 

Are, as God has made ye, free — 

LXXIV. 

" Be your strong and simple words 
Keen to wound as sharpened swords, 
And wide as targes let them be, 
With their shade to cover ye. 

LXXV. 

" Let the tyrants pour around 
With a quick and startling sound, 
Like the loosening of a sea, 
Troops of armed emblazonry. 

LXXVI. 

" Let the charged artillery drive 
Till the dead air seems alive 
With the clash of clanging wheels, 
And the tramp of horses' heels. 

LXXVII. 

" Let the fixed bayonet 
Gleam with sharp desire to wet 
Its bright point in English blood 
Looking keen as one for food. 

LXXVIII. 

" Let the horsemen's scymitars 
Wheel and flash, like sphereless stars 
Thirsting to eclipse their burning 
In a sea of death and mournins;. 



360 



NOTE ON 7'HE MASK OF ANARCHY. 



LXXIX. 

*' Stand ye calm and resolute, 

Like a forest close and mute, 

With folded arms and looks which are 

Weapons of unvanquisht war, 

LXXX. 

" And let Panic, who outspeeds 
The career of armed steeds 
Pass, a disregarded shade 
Thro' your phalanx undismayed. 

LXXXI. 

*' Let the laws of your own land, 
Good or ill, between ye stand 
Hand to hand, and foot to foot, 
Arbiters of the dispute : — 

Lxxxir. 

" The old laws of England — they 
Whose reverend heads with age are gray, 
Children of a wiser day; 
And whose solemn voice must be 
Thine own echo — Liberty ! 

LXXXIII. 

" On those who first should violate 
Such sacred heralds in their state 
Rest the blood that must ensue, 
And it will not rest on you. 

LXXXIV. 

"And if then the tyrants dare 
Let them ride among you there, 
Slash, and stab, and maim, and hew, — 
What they like, that let them do. 

LXXXV. 

*' With folded arms and steady eyes, 
And little fear, and less surprise 
Look upon them as they slay 
Till their rage has died away. 

LXXX VI. 

"Then they will return with shame 
To the place from which they came, 
And the blood thus shed will speak 
In hot blushes on their cheek. 



LXXXVII, 

" Every woman in the land 
Will point at them as they stand' 
They will hardly dare to greet 
Their acquaintance in the street. 

LXXXVIII. 

" And the bold, true warriors 
Who have hugged Danger in the wars 
Will turn to those who would be free 
Ashamed of such base company. 

LXXXIX. 

"And that slaughter to the Nation 
Shall steam up like inspiration, 
Eloquent, oracular; 
A volcano heard afar. 

xc. 

" And these words shall then become 
Like oppression's thundered doom 
Ringing thro' each heart and brain. 
Heard again — again — again ! 

xci. 
" Rise like Lions after slumber 
In unvanquishable number — 
Shake your chains to earth like dew 
Which in sleep had fallen on you — 
Ye are many — they are few." 



NOTE ON THE MASK OF ANARCHY, 
BY MRS. SHELLEY. 

Though Shelley's first eager desire to 
excite his countrymen to resist openly the 
oppressions existent during "the good 
old times " had faded with early youth, 
still his warmest sympathies were for the 
people. He was a republican, and loved 
a democracy. He looked on all human 
beings as inheriting an equal right to 
possess the dearest privileges of our na- 
ture; the necessaries of life when fairly 
earned by labor, and intellectual instruc- 
tion. His hatred of any despotism that 
looked upon the people as not to be con- 
sulted, or protected from want and igno- 
rance, was intense. He was residing 
near Leghorn, at Villa Valsovano, writing 
" The Cenci," when the news of the Man- 



PETER BELL THE THIRD. 



361 



Chester Massacre reached us; il roused 
in him violent emotions of indignation 
and compassion. The great truth that 
the many, if accordant and resolute, 
could control the few, as was shown some 
years after, made him long to teach his 
injured countrymen how to resist. In- 
spired by these feelings, he wrote the 
" Masque of Anarchy," which he sent to 
his friend Leigh Hunt, to be inserted in 
the Examiner, of which he was then the 
editor. 

" Ididnot insert it," Leigh Hunt writes 
in his valuable and interesting preface to 
this poem, when he printed it in 1832, 
"because I thought that the public at 
large had not become sufficiently discern- 
ing to do justice to the sincerity and 
kind-heartedness of the spirit that walked 
in this flaming robe of verse." Days of 
outrage have passed away, and with them 
the exasperation that would cause such 
an appeal to the many to be injurious. 
Without being aware of them, they at one 
time acted on his suggestions, and gained 
the day. But they rose when human 
life was respected by the Minister in 
power; such was not the case during the 
Administration which excited Shelley's 
abhorrence. 

The poem was written for the people, 
and is therefore in a more popular tone 
than usual : portions strike as abrupt and 
unpolished, but many stanzas are all his 
own. I heard him repeat, and admired, 
those beginning 

" My Father Time is old and gray," 
before I knew to what poem they were 
to belong. But the most touching pas- 
sage is that which describes the blessed 
effects of liberty; it might make a patriot 
of any man whose heart was not wholly 
closed against his humbler fellow-crea- 
tures. 

PETER BELL THE THIRD. 
By Miching Mallecho, Esq. 

Is it a party in a parlor, 

Crammed just as they on earth were crammed, 
Some sipping punch — some sipping tea ; 
But, as you by their faces see, 

All silent, and all damned ! 

Peter Bell, by W. Wordsworth. 



Ophelia. — What means this, my lord? 
Hamlet. — Marry, this is Miching Mallecho; it 
means mischief. 

Shakespeare. 



DEDICATION 

TO THOMAS BROWN, ESQ., THE YOUNGER, 
H.F. 

Dear Tom, — Allow me to request you 
to introduce Mr. Peter Bell to the re- 
spectable family of the Fudges. Although 
he may fall short of those very considera- 
ble personages in the more active proper- 
ties which characterize the Rat and the 
Apostate, I suspect that even you, their 
historian, will confess that he surpasses 
them in the more peculiarly legitimate 
qualification of intolerable dulness. 

You know Mr. Examiner Hunt; well 

— it was he who presented me to two of 
the Mr. Bells. My intimacy with the 
younger Mr. Bell naturally sprung from 
this introduction to his brothers. And in 
presenting him to you, I have the satis- 
faction of being al)le to assure you that 
he is considerably the dullest of the three. 

There is this particular advantage in an 
acquaintance with any one of the Peter 
Bells, that if you know one Peter Bell, 
you know three Peter Bells; they are not 
one, but three; not three, but one. An 
awful mystery, which, after having caused 
torrents of blood, and having been 
hymned by groans enough to deafen the 
music of the spheres, is at length illus- 
trated to the satisfaction of all parties in 
the theological world, by the nature of 
Mr. Peter Bell. 

Peter is a polyhedric Peter, or a Peter 
with many sides. He changes colors like 
a chameleon, and his coat like a snake. 
He is a Proteus of a Peter. He was at 
first sublime, pathetic, impressive, pro- 
found; then dull; then prosy and dull; 
and now dull — oh so very dull ! it is an 
ultra-legitimate dulness. 

You will perceive that it is not neces- 
sary to consider Hell and the Devil as su- 
pernatural machinery. The whole scene 
of my epic is in " this world which is" 

— so Peter informed us before his con- 
version to White Obi — 



362 



PETER BELL THE THIRD. 



" The world of all of us, and zvhere 
IVe find ojir happiness, or not at all^ 

Let me observe that I have spent six 
or seven days in composing this sublime 
piece; the orb o^ my moon-like genius 
has made the fourth part of its revolution 
round the dull earth which you inhabit, 
driving you mad, while it has retained its 
calmness and its splendor, and I have 
been fitting this its last phase " to occupy 
a permanent station in the literature of 
my country." 

Your works, indeed, dear Tom, sell bet- 
ter; but mine are far superior. The pub- 
lic is no judge; posterity sets all to rights. 

Allow me to observe that so much has 
been written of Peter Bell, that the pres- 
ent history can be considered only, like 
the " Iliad," as a continuation of that 
series of cyclic poems, which have already 
been candidates for bestowing immortal- 
ity upon, at the same time that they re- 
ceive it from, his character and adven- 
tures. In this point of view I have vio- 
lated no rule of syntax in beginning my 
composition with a conjunction; the full 
stop which closes the poem continued by 
me being, like the full stops at the end 
of the "Iliad" and "Odyssey," a full 
stop of a very qualified import. 

Hoping that the immortality which you 
have given to the Fudges, you will receive 
from them; and in the firm expectation, 
that when London shall be an habitation 
of bitterns; when St. Paul's and West- 
minster Abbey shall stand, shapeless and 
nameless ruins, in the midst of an un- 
peopled marsh; when the piers of Water- 
loo Bridge shall become the nuclei of 
islets of reeds and osiers, and cast the 
jagged shadows of their broken arches on 
the solitary stream, some transatlantic 
commentator will be weighing in the scales 
of some new and now unimagined system 
of criticism, the respective merits of the 
Bells and the Fudges, and their historians. 
I remain, dear Tom, yours sincerely, 

MiCHING MaLLECHO. 
December i, 1819. 

P.S. — Pray excuse the date of place; 
so soon as the profits of the publico tion 
come in, I mean to hire lodgings in a 
more respectable street. 



PROLOGUE. 

Peter Bells, one, two and three, 

O'er the wide world wandering be. — 

First, the antenatal Peter, 

Wrapt in weeds of the same metre, 

The so long predestined raiment 

Clothed in which to walk his way meant 

The second Peter; whose ambition 

Is to link the proposition. 

As the mean of two extremes — 

(This was learnt from Aldric's themes) 

Shielding from the guilt of schism 

The orthodoxal syllogism; 

The First Peter — he who was 

Like the shadow in the glass 

Of the second, yet unripe, 

His substantial antitype. — 

Then came Peter Bell the Second, 

Who henceforward must be reckoned 

The body of a double soul. 

And that portion of the whole 

Without which the rest would seem 

Ends of a disjointed dream. — 

And the Third is he who has 

O'er the grave been forced to pass 

To the other side, which is, — 

Go and try else, — just like this. 



Peter Bell the First was Peter 
Smugger, milder, softer, neater, 
Like the soul before it is 
Born from that world into this. 
The next Peter Bell was he, 
Predevote, like you and me, 
To good or evil as may come; 
His was the severer doom, — 
For he was an evil Cotter, 
And a polygamic Potter. ^ 
And the last is Peter Bell, 
Damned since our first parents fell, 
Damned eternally to Hell — 
Surely he deserves it well ! 



^ The oldest scholiasts read — 

A dodecagnmic Potter. 
This is at once more descriptive and more mega- 
lophonrms, — but the alliteration of the text had 
captivated the vulgar ear of the herd of later 
commentators. 



PETER BELL THE THIRD. 



363 



PART THE FIRST. 

DEATH. 



And Peter Bell, when he had been 
With fresh-imported Hell-fire warmed, 

Grew serious — from his dress and mien 

'T was very plainly to be seen 
Peter was quite reformed. 

II. 

His eyes turned up, his mouth turned 
down ; 

His accent caught a nasal twang; 
He oiled his hair,^ there might be heard 
The grace of God in every word 

Which Peter said or sang. 

III. 

But Peter now grew old, and had 
An ill no doctor could unravel; 
His torments almost drove him mad; — 
Some said it was a fever bad — 
Some swore it was the gravel. 

IV. 

His holy friends then came about. 

And with long preaching and per- 
suasion. 
Convinced the patient that, without 
The smallest shadow of a doubt, 
He was predestined to damnation. 



They said — " Thy name is Peter Bell; 

Thy skin is of a brimstone hue; 
Alive or dead — ay, sick or well — 
The one God made to rhyme with hell; 

The other, I think, rhymes with you." 



1 To those who have not duly appreciated the 
distinction between Whale and Riissia oil, this 
attribute might rather seem to belong to the 
Dandy than" the Evangelic. The effect, when 
to the windward, is indeed so similar, that it 
requires a subtle naturalist to discriminate the 
animals. They belong, however, to distinct 
genera. 



VI. 
Then Peter set up such a yell ! — 

The nurse, who with some water gruel 
Was climbing up the stairs, as well 
As her old legs could climb them — fell, 
And broke them both — the fall was 
cruel. 

VII. 

The Parson from the casement leapt 

Into the lake of Windermere — 
And many an eel, • — ■ though no adept 
In God's right reason for it — kept 
Gnawing his kidneys half a year. 

VIII. 

And all the rest rushed thro' the door, 

And tumbled over one another. 
And broke their skulls. — Upon the floor 
Meanwhile sat Peter Bell, and swore, 
And curst his father and his mother; 

IX. 

And raved of God, and sin, and death, 

Blaspheming like an infidel; 
And said, that with his clenched teeth, 
He 'd seize the earth from underneath, 

And drag it with him down to hell. 

X. 

As he was speaking came a spasm. 

And wrencht his gnashing teeth 
asunder; 
Like one who sees a strange phantasm 
He lay, — there was a silent chasm 
Between his upper jaw and under. 

XI. 

And yellow death lay on his face; 

And a fixt smile that was not human 
Told, as I understand the case. 
That he was gone to the wrong place : — 

I heard all this from the old woman. 

XII. 

Then there came down from Langdale 
Pike 

A cloud, with lightning, wind and hail; 
It swept over the mountains like 
An ocean, — and I heard it strike 

The woods and crags of Grasmere vale. 



3^4 



PETER BELL THE THIRD. 



XIII. 

And I saw the black storm come 
Nearer, minute after minute; 

Its thunder made the cataracts dumb; 

With hiss, and clash, and hollow hum, 
It neared as if the Devil was in it. 

XIV. 

The Devil was in it : — he had bought 
Peter for half-a-crown; and when 

The storm which bore him vanisht, 
naught 

That in the house that storm had caught 
Was ever seen again. 

XV. 

The gaping neighbors came next day — 
They found all vanisht from the 
shore : 
The Bible, whence he used to pray, 
Half scorcht under a hen-coop lay; 
Smasht glass — and nothing more ! 



PART THE SECOND. 

THE DEVIL. 
I. 

The Devil, I safely can aver, 

Has neither hoof, nor tail, nor sting; 
Nor is he, as some sages swear, 
A spirit, neither here nor there. 
In nothing — yet in everything. 



He is — what we are; for sometimes 

The Devil is a gentleman; 
At others a bard bartering rhymes 
For sack; a statesman spinning crimes; 

A swindler, living as he can; 

in. 

A thief, who cometh in the night. 

With whole boots and net pantaloons. 
Like some one whom it were not right 
To mention; — or the luckless wight. 
From whom he steals nine silver 
spoons. 



IV. 



But in this case he did appear 

Like a slop-merchant from Wapping, 
And with smug face, and eye severe, 
On every side did perk and peer 
Till he saw Peter dead or napping. 



He had on an upper Benjamin i 

(For he was of the driving schism) 
In the which he wrapt his skin 
From the storm he travelled in, 

For fear of rheumatism. 

i 

VI. ' I 

He called the ghost out of the corse; — I 

It was exceedingly like Peter, — 
Only its voice was hollow and hoarse — 
It had a queerish look of course — i 

Its dress too was a little neater. 

VII. 

The Devil knew not his name and lot; 

Peter knew not that he was Bell : 
Each had an upper stream of thought, 
Which made all seem as it was not; 

Fitting itself to all things well. | 

i 

VIII. j 

Peter thought he had parents dear, j 

Brothers, sisters, cousins, cronies, | 

In the fens of Lincolnshire; 

He perhaps had found them there 

Had he gone and boldly shown his | 

IX. I 

Solemn .phiz in his own village; 

Where he thought oft when a boy 
He 'd clomb the orchard walls to pillage 
The produce of his neighbor's tillage, 

With marvellous pride and joy. 

X. 

And the Devil thought he had, 
Mid the misery and confusion 

Of an unjust war, just made 

A fortune by the gainful trade 

Of giving soldiers rations bad — 

The world is full of strange delusion. 



PETER BELL THE THIRD. 



365 



XI. 



That he had a mansion planned 

In a square like Grosvenor Square, 
That he was aping fashion, and 
That he now came to Westmoreland 
To see what was romantic there. 



XII. 



And all this, though quite ideal, — 
Ready at a breath to vanish, — 
Was a state not more unreal 
Than the peace he could not feel, 
Or the care he could not banish. 



XIII. 

After a little conversation, 

The Devil told Peter, if he chose. 

He'd bring him to the world of fashion 

By giving him a situation 

In his own service — and new clothes. 

XIV. 

And Peter bowed, quite pleased and 
proud. 
And after waiting some few days 
For a new livery — dirty yellow 
Turned up with black — the wretched 
fellow 
Was bowled to Hell in the Devil's 
chaise. 



PART THE THIRD. 

HELL. 



Hell is a city much like London — 

A populous and a smoky city; 
There are all sorts of people undone. 
And there is little or no fun done; 

Small justice shown, and still less pity. 



There is a Castles, and a Canning, 

A Cobbett, and a Castlereagh; 

All sorts of caitiff corpses planning 

All sorts of cozening for trepanning 

Corpses less corrupt than they. 



III. 

There is a * * *, who has lost 

His wits, or sold them, none knows 
which ; 
He walks about a double ghost, 
And though as thin as Fraud almost — 
Ever grows more grim and rich. 

IV. 

There is a Chancery Court; a King ; 

A manufacturing mob; a set 
Of thieves who by themselves are sent 
Similar thieves to represent; 

An army; and a public debt. 

V. 

Which last is a scheme of paper money, 

And means — being interpreted — 
*' Bees, keep your wax — give us the 

honey, 
And we will plant, while skies are sunny. 
Flowers, which in winter serve in- 
stead." 

VI. 

There is a great talk of revolution — 
And a great chance of despotism — 
German soldiers — camps — confusion — 
Tumults — lotteries — rage — delusion — 
Gin — suicide — and methodism. 

VII. 

Taxes too, on wine and bread, 

And meat, and beer, and tea, and 
cheese, 
From which those patriots pure are fed, 
Who gorge before they reel to bed 
The tenfold essence of all these. 

VIII. 

There are mincing women, mewing, 
(Like cats, who a?nant ??tisere,'^) 
Of their own virtue, and pursuing 

1 One of the attributes in Linnsus's descrip- 
tion of the Cat. To a similar cause the cater- 
wauling of more than one species of this genus 
is to be referred ; — except, indeed, that the 
poor quadruped is compelled to quarrel with its 
own pleasures, whilst the biped is supposed only 
to quarrel with those of others. 



366 



PETER BELL THE THLRD. 



Their gentler sisters to that ruin, 

Without which — what were chastity ? ' 

IX. 

Lawyers — judges — old hobnobbers 

Are there — bailiffs — chancellors — 
Bishops — great and little robbers — 
Rhymesters — pamphleteers — stock-job- 
bers — 
Men of glory in the wars, — 



Things whose trade is, over ladies 

To lean, and flirt, and stare, and 
simper, 
Till all that is divine in woman 
Grows cruel, courteous, smooth, in- 
human, 
Crucified 'twixt a smile and whimper. 

XI. 

Thrusting, toiling, wailing, moiling. 

Frowning, preaching — such a riot ! 
Each with never-ceasing labor. 
Whilst he thinks he cheats his neigh- 
bor. 
Cheating his own heart of quiet. 

XII. 

And all these meet at levees; — 

Dinners convivial and political; — 
Suppers of epic poets; — teas. 
Where small talk dies in agonies; — 
Breakfasts professional and critical; 

XIII. 

Lunches and snacks so aldermanic 

That one would furnish forth ten 
dinners, 
Where reigns a Cretan-tongued panic, 
Lest news Russ, Dutch, or Alemannic 
Should make some losers, and some 
winners; — 

_ ^ What would this husk and excuse for a 
virtue be without its kernel prostitution, or the 
kernel prostitution without this husk of a virtue ? 
I wonder the women of the town do not form an 
association, like the Society for the Suppression 
of Vice, for the support of what may be called 
the " King, Church, and Constitution " of their 
order. But this subject is almost too horrible for 
a joke. 



XIV. 

At conversazioni — balls — 

Conventicles — and drawing-rooms — 
Courts of law — committees — calls \ 

Of a morning — clubs — book-stalls — ! 

Churches — masquerades — and tombs. ' 

XV. 

And this is Hell — and in this smother 
All are damnable and damned; 

Each one damning, damns the other; 

They are damned by one another. 
By none other are they damned. 

i 
XVI. I 

'T is a lie to say, " God damns ! " 2 i 

Where was Heaven's Attorney Gen- 
eral 

When they first gave out such flams? 

Let there be an end of shams. 

They are mines of poisonous mineral. 

XVII. 

Statesmen damn themselves to be 
Curst; and lawyers damn their souls 

To the auction of a fee; 

Churchmen damn themselves to see 
God's sweet love in burning coals. 

XVIII. 

The rich are damned, beyond all cure. 

To taunt, and starve, and trample on 

The weak and wretched; and the poor I 

Damn their broken hearts to endure I 

Stripe on stripe, with groan on groan. 

XIX. 

Sometimes the poor are damned indeed J 
To take, — not means for being 1 
blest, — j 

But Cobbett's snuff, revenge; that weed 
From which the worms that it doth feed 
Squeeze less than they before pos- 
sest. 

* This libel on our national oath, and this 
accusation of all our countrymen of being in the 

daily practice of solemnly asseverating the most \ 

enormous falsehood, I fear deserves the notic« ' 

of a more active Attorney General than that here I 

alluded to. ' 



PETER BELL THE THLRD. 



367 



XX. 

And some few, like we know who, 
Damned — but God alone knows 
why — 
To believe their minds are given 
To make this ugly Hell a Heaven; 
In which faith they live and die. 

XXI. 

Thus, as in a town, plague-stricken, 
Each man be he sound or no 

Must indifferently sicken; 

As when day begins to thicken, 

None knows a pigeon from a crow, — 

XXII. 

So good and bad, sane and mad, 

The oppressor and the opprest; 

Those who weep to see what others 

Smile to inflict upon their brothers; 

Lovers, haters, worst and best; 

XXIII. 

All are damned — they breathe an air. 
Thick, infected, joy-dispelling: 

Each pursues what seems most fair. 

Mining like moles, through mind, and 
there 

Scoop palace-caverns vast, where Care 
In throned state is ever dwelling. 



PART THE FOURTH. 

SIN. 
I. 

Lo, Peter in Hell's Grosvenor Square, 

A footman in the Devil's service ! 
And the misjudging world would swear 
That every man in service there 
To virtue would prefer vice. 

II. 

But Peter, though now damned, was not 

What Peter was before damnation. 
Men oftentimes prepare a lot 
Which, ere it finds them, is not what 
Suits with their genuine station. 



III. 



All things that Peter saw and felt 

Had a peculiar aspect to him; 
And when they came within the belt 
Of his own nature, seemed to melt, 
Like cloud to cloud, into him. 



IV. 



And so the outward world uniting 
To that within him, he became 

Considerably uninviting 

To those, who meditation slighting, 
Were moulded in a different frame. 



And he scorned them, and they scorned 
him; 

And he scorned all they did; and they 
Did all that men of their own trim 
Are wont to do to please their whim, 

Drinking, lying, swearing, play. 

VI. 

Such were his fellow-servants; thus 
His virtue, like our own, was built 

Too much on that indignant fuss 

Hypocrite Pride stirs up in us 
To bully one another's guilt. 

VII. 

He had a mind which was somehow 
At once circumference and centre 

Of all he might or feel or know; 

Nothing went ever out, altho' 
Something did ever enter. 

VIII. 

He had as much imagination 
As a pint-pot; — he never could 

Fancy another situation. 

From which to dart his contemplation, 
Than that wherein he stood. 

IX. 

Yet his was individual mind. 

And new created all he saw 
In a new manner, and refined 
Those new creations, and combined 

Them, by a master-spirit's law. 



368 



PETER BELL THE THLRD. 



Thus — tho' unimaginative — 

An apprehension clear, intense, 
Of his mind's work, had made alive 
The things it wrought on; I believe 
Wakening a sort of thought in sense. 

XI. 

But from the first 't was Peter's drift 

To be a kind of moral eunuch, 
He toucht the hem of Nature's shift, 
Felt faint — and never dared uplift 
The closest, all-concealing tunic. 

XII. 

She laught the while, with an arch 
smile 

And kist him with a sister's kiss, 
And said — " My best Diogenes, 
I love you well — but, if you please. 

Tempt not again my deepest bliss. 

XIII. 

*' 'T is you are cold — for I, not coy. 
Yield love for love, frank, warm, and 
true; 
And Burns, a Scottish peasant boy — 
His errors prove it — knew my joy 
More, learned friend, than you. 

XIV. 

*' Bocca bacciata non perde venhira 

Anzi riiimiova come fa la luna : — 
So thought Boccaccio, whose sweet words 

might cure a 
Male prude, like you, from what you 
now endure, a 
Low -tide in soul, like a stagnant 
laguna." 

XV. 

Then Peter rubbed his eyes severe. 

And smoothed his spacious forehead 
down, 
With his broad palm; — 'twixt love and 

fear. 
He lookt, as he no doubt felt, queer, 
And in his dream sate down. 



XVI. 

The Devil was no uncommon creature; 

A leaden-witted thief — just huddled 
Out of the dross and scum of nature; 
A toad-like lump of limb and feature. 

With mind, and heart, and fancy 
muddled. 

XVII. 

He was that heavy, dull, cold thing. 
The spirit of evil well may be : 

A drone too base to have a sting; 

Who gluts, and grimes his lazy wing. 
And calls lust, luxury. 

XVIII, 

Now he was quite the kind of wight 
Round whom collect, at a fixt era. 
Venison, turtle, hock, and claret, — 
Good cheer — and those who come to 
share it — 
Anci best East Indian madeira ! 

XIX. 

It was his fancy to invite 

Men of science, wit, and learning. 
Who came to lend each other light; 
He proudly thought that his gold's 
might 

Had set those spirits burning. 

XX. 

And men of learning, science, wit, 
Considered him as you and I 

Think of some rotten tree, and sit 

Lounging and dining under it. 
Exposed to the wide sky. 

XXI. 

And all the while, with loose fat smile, 
The willing wretch sat winking there, 
Believing 't was his power that made 
That jovial scene — and that all paid 
Homage to his unnoticed chair. 

XXII. 

Tho' to be sure this place was Hell; 

He was the Devil — and all they — 
What though the claret circled well. 
And wit, like ocean, rose and fell? — 

Were damned eternally. 



PETER BELL THE THLRD. 



369 



PART THE FIFTH. 

GRACE. 
I. 

Among the guests who often staid 

Till the Devil's petits-soupers, 
A man there came, fair as a maid, 
And Peter noted what he said, 

Standing behind his master's chair. 

II. 

He was a mighty poet — and 

A subtle-souled psychologist; 
All things he seemed to understand, 
Of old or new — of sea or land — 
But his own mind — which was a mist. 



III. 



This was a man who might have turned 
Hell into Heaven — and so in gladness 

A Heaven unto himself have earned; 

But he in shadows undiscerned 

Trusted, — and damned himself to 
madness. 



IV. 



He spoke of poetry, and how 

" Divine it was — a light — a love — 

A spirit which like wind doth blow 

As it listeth, to and fro; 

A dew rained down from God above, 

V. 

" A power which comes and goes like 
dream, 
And which none can ever trace — 
Heaven's light on earth — Truth's bright- 
est beam." 
And when he ceased there lay the gleam 
Of those words upon his face. 



VI. 



Now Peter, when he heard such talk. 
Would, heedless of a broken pate, 
Stand like a man asleep, or balk 
Some wishing guest of knife or fork, 
Or drop and break his master's plate. 



VII. 



At night he oft would start and wake 

Like a lover, and began 
In a wild measure songs to make 
On moor, and glen, and rocky lake, 

And on the heart of man — 



VIII. 

And on the universal sky — 

And the wide earth's bosom green, — 
And the sweet, strange mystery 
Of what beyond these things may lie, 

And yet remain unseen. 

IX. 

For in his thought he visited 

The spots in which, ere dead and 
damned, 
He his wayward life had led; 
Yet knew not whence the thoughts were 
fed. 
Which thus his fancy crammed. 



And these obscure remembrances 
Stirred such harmony in Peter, 
That whensoever he should please, 
He could speak of rocks and trees 
In poetic metre. 

XI. 

For tho' it was without a sense 

Of memory, yet he remembered well 

Many a ditch and quick-set fence; 

Of lakes he had intelligence. 

He knew something of heath and fell. 

XII. 

He had also dim recollections 

Of pedlars tramping on their rounds; 
Milk-pans and pails; and odd collections 
Of saws, and proverbs; and reflections 

Old parsons make in burying-grounds. 

XIII. 

But Peter's verse was clear, and came 
Announcing from the frozen hearth 

Of a cold age, that none might tame 

The soul of that diviner flame 
It augured to the Earth. 



370 



PETER BELL THE THIRD. 



XIV. 



Like gentle rains, on the dry plains, 

Making that green which late was gray, 
Or like the sudden moon, that stains 
Some gloomy chamber's window panes 
With a broad light like day. 



XV. 



For language was in Peter's hand. 

Like clay, while he was yet a potter; 
And he made songs for all the land. 
Sweet both to feel and understand. 
As pipkins late to mountain cotter. 



XVI. 

And Mr. , the bookseller, 

Gave twenty pounds for some; — then 
scorning 
A footman's yellow coat to wear, 
Peter, too proud of heart, I fear. 
Instantly gave the Devil warning. 



XVII. 

Whereat the Devil took offence. 

And swore in his soul a great oath 
then, 
*' That for his damned impertinence. 
He'd bring him to a proper sense 
Of what was due to gentlemen ! " — 



PART THE SIXTH. 

DAMNATION. 
I. 

** O THAT mine enemy had written 
A book ! " — cried Job : — a fearful 
curse; 
If to the Arab, as the Briton, 
'T was galling to be critic-bitten : — 
The Devil to Peter wished no worse. 

II. 

"When Peter's next new book found vent. 
The Devil to all the first Reviews 

A copy of it slyly sent, 

With five-pound note as compliment, 
And this short notice — " Pra^y abuse." 



III. 

Then seriatim^ month and quarter, 
Appeared such mad tirades. — One 
said — 
" Peter seduced Mrs. Foy's daughter. 
Then drowned the mother in Ullswater, 
The last thing as he went to bed." 



IV. 

Another — " Let him shave his head ! 

Where's Dr. Willis? — Or is he joking? 
What does the rascal mean or hope. 
No longer imitating Pope, 

In that barbarian Shakespeare pok- 
ing?" 

V. 

One more, *' Is incest not enough? 

And must there be adultery too? 
Grace after meat? Miscreant and Liar! 
Thief ! Blackguard ! Scoundrel ! Fool ! 
Hell-fire 

Is twenty times too good for you. 



VI. 

" By that last book of yours WE think 
You've double damned yourself to 
scorn; 
We warned you whilst yet on the brink 
You stood. From your black name will 
shrink 
The babe that is unborn." 



VII. 

All these Reviews the Devil made 
Up in a parcel, which he had 

Safely to Peter's house conveyed. 

For carriage, tenpence Peter paid — 
Untied them — read them — went half- 
mad. 

VIII. 

" W^hat ! " cried he, " this is my reward 
For nights of thought, and days of toil? 
Do poets, but to be abhorred 
By men of whom they never heard, 
Consume their spirits' oil? 



PETER BELL THE THLRD. 



371 



IX. 

' • What have I done to them ? — and who 
Is Mrs. Foy? 'T is very cruel 

To speak of me and Betty so ! 

Adultery ! God defend me ! Oh ! 
I 've half a mind to fight a duel. 



X. 



"Or," cried he, a grave look collecting, 

" Is it my genius, like the moon, 
Sets those who stand her face inspecting, 
That face within their brain reflecting. 
Like a crazed bell-chime, out of tune?" 

XI. 

For Peter did not know the town, 
But thought, as country readers do, 

For half a guinea or a crown. 

He bought oblivion or renown 

From God's own voice ^ in a review. 



XII. 

All Peter did on this occasion 

Was, writing some sad stuff in prose. 
It is a dangerous invasion 
When poets criticise; their station 
Is to delight, not pose. 

XIII. 

The Devil then sent to Leipsic fair. 

For Born's translation of Kant's book; 
A world of words, tail foremost, where 
Right — wrong — false — true — and foul 
— and fair, 
As in a lottery-wheel are shook. 

XIV. 

Five thousand crammed octavo pages 

Of German psychologies, — he 
Who \i\.'i furor verborut/i assuages 
Thereon, deserves just seven months' 
wages 
More than will e'er be due to me. 



' Vox populi, vox del. As Mr. Godwin truly 
observes of a more famous saying, of some tnerit 
as a po/ijilar tnaxhn, but totally destitute of 
philosophical accuracy. 



XV. 

I lookt on them nine several days, 

And then I saw that they were bad; 
A friend, too, spoke in their dispraise, — 
He never read them; — with amaze 
I found Sir William Drummond had. 

XVI. 

When the book came, the Devil sent 

It to P. Verbovale,'^ Esquire, 
With a brief note of compliment. 
By that night's Carlisle mail. It went, 
And set his soul on fire. 

XVII. 

Fire, which ex luce prcebens fumtnn. 
Made him beyond the bottom see 

Of truth's clear well — when I and you 
Ma'am, 

Go, as we shall do, subter hiimuniy 
We may know more than he. 

XVIII. 

Now Peter ran to seed in soul 

Into a walking paradox; 
For he was neither part nor whole, 
Nor good, nor bad — nor knave nor fool, 

— Among the woods and rocks. 

XIX. 

Furious he rode, where late he ran, 

Lashing and spurring his tame hobby; 
Turned to a formal puritan, , 

A solemn and unsexual man, — 
He half believed White Obi. 

XX. 

This steed in vision he would ride, 

High trotting over nine-inch bridges, 
With Flibbertigibbet, imp of pride, 
Mocking and mowing by his side — 
A mad-brained goblin for a guide — 
Over corn-fields, gates, and hedges. 



2 Quasi, Qui valet verba : — i.e. all the words 
which have been, are, or may be expended by, 
for, against, witli, or on him. A sufficient proof 
of the utility of this history. Peter's progenitor 
who selected this name seems to have possessed 
a pure anticipated cognition of the nature and 
modesty of this ornament of his posterity. 



372 



PETER BELL THE THIRD. 



XXI. 

After these ghastly rides, he came 

Home to his heart, and found from 
thence 
Much stolen of its accustomed flame; 
His thoughts grew weak, drowsy, and 
lame 
Of their intelligence. 

XXII. 

To Peter's view, all seemed one hue; 

He was no Whig, he was no Tory; 
No Deist and no Christian he; — 
He got so subtle, that to be 

Nothing was all his glory. 

XXIII. 

One single point in his belief 

From his organization sprung, 

The heart-enrooted faith, the chief 

Ear in his doctrines' blighted sheaf, 

That "happiness is wrong; " 

XXIV. 

So thought Calvin and Dominic; 

So think their fierce successors, who 
Even now would neither stint nor stick 
Our flesh from off our bones to pick, 

If they might " do their do." 

XXV. 

His morals thus were undermined: — 
The old Peter — the hard, old Potter 

Was born anew within his mind; 

He grew dull, harsh, sly, unrefined. 
As when he tramped beside the Otter. ^ 

XXVI. 

In the death hues of agony 

Lambently flashing from a fish. 
Now Peter felt amused to see 
Shades like a rainbow's rise and flee, 
Mixt with a certain hungry wish.^ 

1 A famous river in the new Atlantis of the 
Dynastophylic Pantisocratists. 

* See the description of the beautiful colors 
produced during the agonizing death of a number 
of trout, in the fourth part of a long poem in 
blank verse, published within a few years. That 



XXVII. 



So in his Country's dying face 

He lookt — and lovely as she lay, 
Seeking in vain his last embrace, 
Wailing her own abandoned case. 

With hardened sneer he turned away: 



XXVIII. 

And coolly to his own soul said; — 
"Do you not think that we might 
make 
A poem on her when she's dead: — 
Or, no — a thought is in my head — 
Her shroud for a new sheet I'll take. 



XXIX. 

"My wife wants one. — Let who will 
bury 

This mangled corpse ! And I and you. 
My dearest Soul, will then make merry, 
As the Prince Regent did with Sherry, — 

Ay — and at last desert me too." 

XXX. 

And so his Soul would not be gay. 

But moaned within him; like a fawn 
Moaning within a cave, it lay 
Wounded and wasting, day by day, 
Till all its life of life was gone. 

XXXI. 

As troubled skies stain waters clear, 

The storm in Peter's heart and mind 
Now made his verses dark and queer : 
They were the ghosts of what they were, 
Shaking dim grave-clothes in the wind. 



poem contains curious evideiice of the gradual 
hardening of a strong but circumscribed sensi- 
bility, of the perversion of a penetrating but 
panic-stricken understanding. The author niipht 
have derived a lesson which he had probably for- 
gotten from these sw6et and sublime verses : 
" This lesson, Shepherd, let us two divide, 
Taught both by what she * shows and what 

conceals. 
Never to blend our pleasure or our pride 
With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels." 

* Nature. 



PETER BELL THE THIRD. 



373 



XXXII. 

For he now raved enormous folly, 

Of Baptisms, Sunday - schools, and 
Graves, 
'T would make George Colman melan- 
choly, 
To have heard him, like a male Molly, 
Chanting those stupid staves. 

XXXIII. 

Yet the Reviews, who heaped abuse 

On Peter while he wrote for freedom, 
So soon as in his song they spy, 
The folly which soothes tyranny, 
Praise him, for those who feed 'em. 

XXXIV. 

*' He was a man, too great to scan; — 

A planet lost in truth's keen rays: — 
His virtue, awful and prodigious; — 
He was the most sublime, religious, 
Pure-minded Poet of these days." 

XXXV. 

As soon as he read that, cried Peter, 

" Eureka ! I have found the way 
To make a better thing of metre 
Than e'er was made by living creature 
Up to this blessed day." 

XXXVI. 

Then Peter wrote odes to the Devil; — 
In one of which he meekly said: 

" May Carnage and Slaughter, 

Thy niece and thy daughter, 

May Rapine and Famine, 

Thy gorge ever cramming, 

Glut thee with living and dead ! 

XXXVII. 

" May death and damnation, 

And consternation. 
Flit up from hell with pure intent ! 

Slash them at Manchester, 

Glasgow, Leeds, and Chester; 
Drench all with blood from Avon to 
Trent. 



XXXVIII. 

" Let thy body-guard yeomen 
Hew down babes and women, 
And laugh with bold triumph till Pleaven 
be rent. 
When Moloch in Jewry, 
Muncht children with fury, 
It was thou. Devil, dining with pure in 
tent."i 



PART THE SEVENTH. 



DOUBLE DAMNATION. 



The Devil now knew his proper cue. — 

Soon as he read the ode, he drove 
To his friend Lord MacMurderchouse's, 
A man of interest in both houses. 

And said : — " For money or for love, 

II. 

*' Pray find some cure or sinecure; 

To feed from the superfluous taxes, 
A friend of ours — a poet — fewer 
Have fluttered tamer to the lure 

Than he." His lordship stands and 
racks his 

III. 

Stupid brains, while one might count 

As many beads as he had boroughs, — 
At length replies; from his mean front. 
Like one who rubs out an account. 

Smoothing away the unmeaning fur- 
rows: 

IV. 

"It happens fortunately, dear Sir, 
I can. I hope I need require 

1 It is curious to observe how often extremes 
meet. Cobbettand Peter use the same language 
for a different purpose : Peter is indeed a sort of 
metrical Cobbett. Cobbett is, however, more 
mischievous than Peter, because he pollutes a 
holy and now unconquerable cause with the prin- 
ciples of legitimate murder; whilst the other only 
makes a bad one ridiculous and odious. 

If either Peter or Cobbett should see this note, 
each will feel more indignation at being compared 
to the other than at any censure implied in the 
moral perversion laid to their charge. 



374 



PETER BELL THE THIRD. 



No pledge from you, that he will stir 
In our affairs; — like Oliver, 

That he '11 be worthy of his hire." 



V. 



These words exchanged, the news sent off 

To Peter, home the Devil hied, — 
Took to his bed; he had no cough, 
No doctor, — meat and drink enough, — 
Yet that same night he died. 



VI. 

The Devil's corpse was leaded down; 

His decent heirs enjoyed his pelf, 
Mourning-coaches, many a one. 
Followed his hearse along the town: — 

Where was the Devil himself? 

VII. 

When Peter heard of his promotion. 

His eyes grew like two stars for bliss: 
There was a bow of sleek devotion. 
Engendering in his back; each motion 
Seemed a Lord's shoe to kiss. 

VIII. 

He hired a house, bought plate, and 
made 

A genteel drive up to his door, 
With sifted gravel neatly laid, — 
As if defying all who said, 

Peter was ever poor. 

IX. 
But a disease soon struck into 

The very life and soul of Peter — 
He walkt about — slept — had the hue 
Of health upon his cheeks — and few 

Dug better — none a heartier eater, 

X. 

And yet a strange and horrid curse 
Clung upon Peter, night and day, 
Month after month the thing grew worse, 
And deadlier than in this my verse, 
I can find strength to say. 

XI. 

Peter was dull — he was at first 
Dull — oh, so dull — so very dull ! 



Whether he talkt, wrote, or rchearst — 
Still with this dulness was he curst — 
Dull — beyond all conception — dull. 

XII. 

No one could read his books — no mortal. 
But a few natural friends, would hear 
him ; 
The parson came not near his portal; 
His state was like that of the immortal 
Described by Swift — no man could 
bear him. 

XIII. 

His sister, wife, and children yawned. 
With a long, slow, and drear ennui, 

All human patience far beyond; 

Their hopes of Heaven each would have 
pawned. 
Anywhere else to be. 

XIV. 

But in his verse, and in his prose, 
The essence of his dulness was 
Concentred and comprest so close, 
'T would have made Guatimozin doze 
On his red gridiron of brass. 

XV. 

A printer's boy, folding those pages, 
Fell slumbrously upon one side; 

Like those famed seven who slept three 
ages. 

To wakeful frenzy's vigil rages. 

As opiates, were the same applied. 

XVI. 

Even the Reviewers who were hired 
To do the work of his reviewing, 
With adamantine nerves, grew tired; — 
Gaping and torpid they retired. 

To dream of what they should be 
doing. 

XVII. 

And worse and worse, the drowsy curse 
Yawned in him, till it grew a pest — 
A wide contagious atmosphere, 
Creeping like cold through all things 
near; 
A power to infect and to infest. 



NOTE ON PETER BELL THE THIRD. 



375 



XVIII. 



His servant-maids and dogs grew dull; 

His kitten late a sportive elf, 
The woods and lakes, so beautiful, 
Of dim stupidity were full, 

All grew dull as Peter's self. 



XIX. 

The earth under his feet — the springs, 

Which lived within it a quick life. 
The air, the winds of many wings. 
That fan it with new murmurings, 

Were dead to their harmonious strife. 

XX. 

The birds and beasts within the wood. 
The insects, and each creeping thing, 

Were now a silent multitude; 

Love's work was left unwrought — no 
brood 
Near Peter's house took wing. 

XXI. 

And every neighboring cottager 

Stupidly yawned upon the other : 
No jack-ass brayed; no little cur 
Cockt up his ears; — no man would 
stir 
To save a dying mother. 

XXII. 

Yet all from that charmed district went 

But some half-idiot and half-knave. 
Who rather than pay any rent, 
Would live with marvellous content. 
Over his father's grave. 

XXIII. 

No bailiff dared within that space, 

For fear of the dull charm, to enter; 
A man would bear upon his face. 
For fifteen months in any case. 
The yawn of such a venture. 

XXIV. 

Seven miles above — below — around — 
This pest of dulness holds its sway ; 

A ghastly life without a sound; 

To Peter's soul the spell is bound — 
How should it ever pass away ? 



NOTE ON PETER BELL THE 

THIRD, BY MRS. SHELLEY. 
In this new edition I have added Peter 
Bell the Third. A critique on W^ords- 
worth's Peter Bell reached us at Leghorn, 
which amused Shelley exceedingly, and 
suggested this poem. 

I need scarcely observe that nothing 
personal to the author of Peter Bell is 
intended in this poem. No man ever 
admired Wordsworth's poetry more; — he 
read it perpetually, and taught others to 
appreciate its beauties. This poem is, 
like all others written by Shelley, ideal. 
He conceived the idealism of a poet — a 
man of lofty and creative genius — quit- 
ting the glorious calling of discovering and 
announcing the beautiful and good, to 
support and propagate ignorant prejudices 
and pernicious errors; imparting to the 
unenlightened, not that ardor for truth 
and spirit of toleration which Shelley 
looked on as the sources of the moral im- 
provement and happiness of mankind, but 
false and injurious opinions, that evil was 
good, and that ignorance and force were 
the best allies of purity and virtue. His 
idea was that a man gifted, even as trans- 
cendently as the author of Peter Bell, with 
the highest qualities of genius, must, if 
he fostered such errors, be infected with 
dulness. This poem was written as a 
warning — not as a narration of the reality. 
He was unacquainted personally with 
W^ordsworth, or with Coleridge (to whom 
he alludes in the fifth part of the poem), 
and therefore, I repeat, his poem is purely 
ideal ; — it contains something of criticism 
on the compositions of those great poets, 
but nothing injurious to the men them- 
selves. 

No poem contains more of Shelley's 
peculiar views with regard to the errors 
into which many of the wisest have fallen, 
and the pernicious effects of certain opin- 
ions on society. Much of it is beautifully 
written: and, though, like the burlesque 
drama of Stvellfoot, it must be looked on 
as a plaything, it has so much merit and 
poetry — so much of himself in it — that 
it cannot fail to interest greatly, and by 
right belongs to the world for whose in- 
struction and benefit it was written. 



376 



LETTER TO MARIA GISBORNE. 



LETTER TO MARIA GISBORNE. 

Leghorn, July i> 1820. 

The spider spreads her webs, whether 
she be 

In poet's tower, cellar, or barn, or tree; 

The silk-worm in the dark green mul- 
berry leaves 

His winding sheet and cradle ever 
weaves; 

So I, a thing whom moralists call worm, 

Sit spinning still round this decaying 
form. 

From the fine threads of rare and subtle 
thought — 

No net of words in garish colors wrought 

To catch the idle buzzers of the day — 

But a soft cell, where when that fades 
away, 

Memory may clothe in wings my living 
name 

And feed it with the asphodels of fame, 

Which in those hearts which most re- 
member me 

Grow, making love an immortality. 

Whoever should behold me now, I 

wist, 
Would think I were a mighty mechanist, 
Bent with sublime Archimedean art 
To breathe a soul into the iron heart 
Of some machine portentous, or strange 

gin, 
Which by the force of figured spells 

might win 
Its way over the sea, and sport therein ; 
For round the walls are hung dread 

engines, such 
As Vulcan never wrought for Jove to 

clutch 
Ixion or the Titan : — or the quick 
Wit of that man of God, St. Dominic, 
To convince Atheist, Turk, or Heretic, 
Or those in philanthropic council met, 
Who thought to pay some interest for 

the debt 
They owed to Jesus Christ for their sal- 
vation, 
By giving a faint foretaste of damnation 
To Shakespeare, Sidney, Spenser, and 

the rest 
Who made our land an island of the blest, 



When lamp-like Spain, who now relumes 

her fire 
On Freedom's hearth, grew dim with 

Empire : — 
With thumbscrews, wheels, with tooth 

and spike and jag, 
Which fishers found under the utmost 

crag 
Of Cornwall and the storm-encompast 

isles. 
Where to the sky the rude sea rarely 

smiles 
Unless in treacherous wrath, as on the 

morn 
When the exulting elements in scorn 
Satiated with destroyed destruction, lay 
Sleeping in beauty on their mangled 

prey, 
As panthers sleep; — and other strange 

and dread 
Magical forms the brick floor over- 
spread, — 
Proteus transformed to metal did not 

make 
More figures, or more strange; nor did 

he take 
Such shapes of unintelligible brass. 
Or heap himself in such a horrid mass 
Of tin and iron not to be understood; 
And forms of unimaginable wood. 
To puzzle Tubal Cain and all his brood : 
Great screws, and cones, and wheels, 

and grooved blocks. 
The elements of what will stand the 

shocks 
Of wave and wind and time. — Upon 

the table 
More knacks and quips there be than I 

am able 
To catalogize in this verse of mine: — 
A pretty bowl of wood — not full of 

wine, 
But quicksilver; that dew which the 

gnomes drink 
When at their subterranean toil they 

swink. 
Pledging the demons of the earthquake, 

who 
Reply to them in lava — cry halloo! 
And call out to the cities o'er their 

head, — 
Roofs, towers, and shrines, the dying 

and the dead. 



LETTER TO MARIA G IS BORNE. 



377 



Crash through the chinks of earth — and 

then all quaff 
Another rouse, and hold their sides and 

laugh. 
This quicksilver no gnome has drunk — 

within 
The walnut bowl it lies, veined and thin, 
In color like the wake of light that 

stains 
The Tuscan deep, when from the moist 

moon rains 
The inmost shower of its white fire — 

the breeze 
Is still — blue heaven smiles over the 

pale seas. 
And in this bowl of quicksilver — for I 
Yield to the impulse of an infancy 
Outlasting manhood — I have made to 

float 
A rude idealism of a paper boat : — 
A hollow screw with cogs — Henry will 

know 
The thing I mean and laugh at me, — if so 
He fears not I should do more mischief. 

— Next 
Lie bills and calculations much perplext. 
With steam-boats, frigates, and ma- 
chinery quaint 
Traced over them in blue and yellow 

paint. 
Then comes a range of mathematical 
Instruments, for plans nautical and 

statical; 
A heap of rosin, a queer broken glass 
With ink in it; — a china cup that was 
What it will never be again, I think, 
A thing from which sweet lips were wont 

to drink 
The liquor doctors rail at — and which I 
Will quaff in spite of them — and when 

we die 
We '11 toss up who died first of drinking 

tea, 
And cry out, — heads or tails? where'er 

we be. 
Near that a dusty paint box, some odd 

hooks, 
A half-burnt match, an ivory block, 

three books. 
Where conic sections, spherics, loga- 
rithms, 
To great Laplace, from Saunderson and 
Sintis, 



Lie heapt in their harmonious disarray 

Of figures, — disentangle them who may. 

Baron de Tott's Memoirs beside them lie, 

And some odd volumes of old chemistry. 

Near those a most inexplicable thing. 

With lead in the middle — I'm conjectur- 
ing 

How to make Henry understand; but 
no — 

I '11 leave, as Spenser says, with many 
mo. 

This secret in the pregnant womb of 
time, 

Too vast a matter for so weak a rhyme. 

And here like some weird Archimage 

sit I, 
Plotting dark spells, and devilish 

enginery. 
The self-impelling steam-wheels of the 

mind 
Which pump up oaths from clergymen, 

and grind 
The gentle spirit of our meek reviews 
Into a powdery foam of salt abuse, 
Ruffling the ocean of their self-con- 
tent; — 
I sit — and smile or sigh as is my bent, 
But not for them — Libeccio rushes 

round 
With an inconstant and an idle sound, 
I heed him more than them — the 

thunder-smoke 
Is gathering on the mountains, like a 

cloak 
Folded athwart their shoulders broad and 

bare; 
The ripe corn under the undulating air 
Undulates like an ocean; — and the 

vines 
Are trembling wide in all their trellist 

lines — 
The murmur of the awakening sea doth 

fill 
The empty pauses of the blast; — the 

hill 
Looks hoary through the white electric 

rain, 
And from the glens beyond, in sullen 

strain, 
The interrupted thunder howls; above 
One chasm of heaven smiles, like the eye 

of Love 



37^ 



LETTER TO MARIA GISBORNE. 



On the unquiet world; — while such 

things are, 
How could one worth your friendship 

heed the war 
Of worms? the shriek of the world's 

carrion jays, 
Their censure, or their wonder, or their 

praise ? 

You are not here ! the quaint witch 
Memory sees 
In vacant chairs, your absent images. 
And points where once you sat, and now 

should be 
But are not. — I demand if ever we 
Shall meet as then we met; — and she 

replies. 
Veiling in awe her second-sighted eyes; 
** I know the past alone — but summon 

home 
My sister Hope, — she speaks of all to 

come." 
But I, an old diviner, who knew well 
Every false verse of that sweet oracle, 
Turned to the sad enchantress once again, 
And sought a respite from my gentle 

pain. 
In citing every passage o'er and o'er 
Of our communion — how on the sea- 
shore 
We watcht the ocean and the sky to- 
gether. 
Under the roof of blue Italian weather; 
How I ran home through last year's 

thunder-storm. 
And felt the transverse lightning linger 

warm 
Upon my cheek — and how we often 

made 
Feasts for each other, where good will 

outweighed 
The frugal luxury of our country cheer, 
As well it might, were it less firm and 

clear 
Than ours must ever be; — and how we 

spun 
A shroud of talk to hide us from the sun 
Of this familiar life, which seems to be 
But is not, — or is but quaint mockery 
Of all we would believe, and sadly blame 
The jarring and inexplicable frame 
Of this wrong world: — and then anato- 
mize 



The purposes and thoughts of men whose 

eyes 
Were closed in distant years; — or widely 

guess 
The issue of the earth's great business, 
When we shall be as we no longer 

are — 
Like babbling gossips safe, who hear the 

war 
Of winds, and sigh, but tremble not; — 

or how 
You listened to some interrupted flow 
Of visionary rhyme, — in joy and pain 
Struck from the inmost fountains of my 

brain. 
With little skill perhaps; — or how we 

sought 
Those deepest wells of passion or of 

thought 
Wrought by wise poets in the waste of 

years. 
Staining their sacred waters with our 

tears; 
Quenching a thirst ever to be renewed ! 
Or how I, wisest lady ! then indued 
The language of a land which now is 

free, 
And winged with thoughts of truth and 

majesty. 
Flits round the tyrant's sceptre like a 

cloud. 
And bursts the peopled prisons, and cries 

aloud, 
" My name is Legion ! " — that majestic 

tongue 
Which Calderon over the desert flung 
Of ages and of nations; and which 

found 
An echo in our hearts, and with the 

sound 
Startled oblivion; — thou wert then to me 
As is a nurse — when inarticulately 
A child would talk as its grown parents 

do. 
If living winds the rapid clouds pursue. 
If hawks chase doves through the 

ethereal way. 
Huntsmen the innocent deer, and beasts 

their prey, 
Why should not we rouse with the spirit's 

blast 
Out of the forest of the pathless past 
These recollected pleasures? 



LETTER TO MARIA GISBORNE. 



379 



You are now 
In London, that great sea, whose ebb 

and flow 
At once is deaf and loud, and on the 

shore 
Vomits its wrecks, and still howls on for 

more. 
Yet in its depth what treasures ! You 

will see 
That which was Godwin, — greater none 

than he 
Tho' fallen — and fallen on evil times — 

to stand 
Among the spirits of our age and land. 
Before the dread tribunal of to co?ne 
The foremost, — while Rebuke cowers 

pale and dumb. 
You will see Coleridge — he who sits 

obscure 
In the exceeding lustre, and the pure 
Intense irradiation of a mind. 
Which, with its own internal lightning 

blind, 
Flags v/earily through darkness and de- 
spair — 
A cloud-encircled meteor of the air, 
A hooded eagle among blinking owls. — 
You will see Hunt — one of those happy 

souls 
Which are the salt of the earth, and 

without whom 
This world would smell like what it is — 

a tomb; 
Who is, what others seem; his room no 

doubt 
Is still adorned by many a cast from 

Shout, 
With graceful flowers tastefully placed 

about ; 
And coronals of bay from ribbons hung. 
And brighter wreaths in neat disorder 

flung; 
The gifts of the most learn'd among 

some dozens 
Of female friends, sisters-in-law, and 

cousins. 
And there is he with his eternal puns, 
Which beat the dullest brain for smiles, 

like duns 
Thundering for money at a poet's door; 
Alas ! it is no use to say, "I'm poor ! " 
Or oft in graver mood, when he will look 
Things wiser than were ever read in book, 



Except in Shakespeare's wisest tender- 
ness. — 
You will see Hogg, — and I cannot ex- 
press 
His virtues, — though I know that they 

are great, 
Because he locks, then barricades the 
gate 

Within which they inhabit; — of his wii 

And wisdom, you'll cry out when you 
are bit. 

He is a pearl within an oyster shell, 

One of the richest of the deep; — and 
there 

Is English Peacock with his mountain 
fair 

Turned into a Flamingo; — that shy bird 

That gleams i' the Indian air — have you 
not heard 

When a man marries, dies, or turns Hin- 
doo, 

His best friends hear no more of him? — 
but you 

Will see him, and will like him too, I 
hope. 

With the milk-white Snowdonian Ante- 
lope 

Matcht with this camelopard — his fine 
wit 

Makes such a wound-, the knife is lost 
in it; 

A strain too learned for a shallow age. 

Too wise for selfish bigots; let his page 

Which charms the chosen spirits of the 
time. 

Fold itself up for the serener clime 

Of years to come, and find its recom- 
pense 

In that just expectation. — Wit and sense, 

Virtue and human knowledge; all that 
might 

Make this dull world a business of de- 
light, 

Are all combined in Horace Smith. — 
And these, 

With some exceptions, which I need not 
tease 

Your patience by descanting on, — are 
all 

You and I know in London. 

I recall 

My thoughts, and bid you look upon the 
night. 



38o 



LETTER TO MARIA GISBORNE. 



As 



the 



water does a sponge, 

light 
Fills the void, hollow, universal air — 
What see you? — unpavilioned heaven is 

fair 
Whether the moon, into her chamber 

gone, 
Leaves midnight to the golden stars, or 

wan 
Climbs with diminisht beams the azure 

steep; 
Or whether clouds sail o'er the inverse 

deep, 
Piloted by the many-wandering blast. 
And the rare stars rush thro' them dim 

and fast : — 
All this is beautiful in every land. — 
But what see you beside? — a shabby 

stand 
Of Hackney coaches — a brick house or 

wall 
Fencing some lonely court, white with 

the scrawl 
Of our unhappy politics ; — or worse — 
A wretched woman reeling by, whose 

curse 
Mixt with the watchman's, partner of 

her trade. 
You must accept in place of serenade — 
Or yellow-haired Pollonia murmuring 
To Henry, some unutterable thing. 
I see a chaos of green leaves and fruit 
Built round dark caverns, even to the 

root 
Of the living stems that feed them — in 

whose bowers 
There sleep in their dark dew the folded 

flowers; 
Beyond, the surface of the unsickled corn 
Trembles not in the slumbering air, and 

borne 
In circles quaint, and ever-changing 

dance, 
Like winged stars the fire-flies flash and 

glance. 
Pale in the open moonshine, but each one 
Under the dark trees seems a little sun, 
A meteor tamed; a fixt star gone astray 
From the silver regions of the milky 

way; — 
Afar the Contadino's song is heard, 
Rude, but made sweet by distance — and 

a. bird 



Which cannot be the Nightingale, and 

yet 
I know none else that sings so sweet as it 
At this late hour; — and then all is 

still — 
Now Italy or London, which you will ! 

Next winter you must pass with me; 

I '11 have 
My house by that time turned into a grave 
Of dead despondence and low-thoughted 

care. 
And all the dreams which our tormentors 

are; 
Oh ! that Hunt, Hogg, Peacock, and 

Smith were there. 
With everything belonging to them fair ! — 
We will have books, Spanish, Italian, 

Greek; 
And ask one week to make another week 
As like his father, as I 'm unlike mine. 
Which is not his fault, as you may divine. 
Though we eat little flesh and drink no 

wine. 
Yet let 's be merry : we '11 have tea and 

toast; 
Custards for supper, and an endless host 
Of syllabubs and jellies and mince-pies. 
And other such lady-like luxuries, — 
Feasting on which we will philosophize ! 
And we '11 have fires out of the Grand 

Duke's wood, 
To thaw the six weeks' winter in our 

blood. 
And then we '11 talk ; — what shall we talk 

about? 
Oh ! there are themes enough for many a 

bout 
Of thought-entangled descant; — as to 

nerves — 
With cones and parallelograms and curves 
I've sworn to strangle them if once they 

dare 
To bother me — when you are with me 

there. 
And they shall never more sip laudanum, 
From Helicon or Himeros;i — well, 

come. 
And in despite of God and of the devil, 
We '11 make our friendly philosophic revel 

I'l/aepo?, from which the river Himera was 
named, is, with some slight shade of difference, a 
synonym of Love. 



THE WITCH OF ATLAS. 



381 



Outlast the leafless time; till buds and 

flowers 
Warn the obscure inevitable hours, 
Sweet meeting by sad parting to renew ; — 
" To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures 

new." 



THE WITCH OF ATLAS. 
TO MARY. 

(on her objecting to the following 

POEM, upon the score OF ITS CON- 
TAINING NO HUMAN INTEREST.) 

I. 

How, my dear Mary, are you critic-bit- 
ten, 
(For vipers kill, tho' dead,) by some 
review, 
That you condemn these verses I have 
written, 
Because they tell no story, false or true ! 
What, tho' no mice are caught by a 
young kitten, 
May it not leap and play as grown cats 
do. 
Till its claws come ? Prithee, for this one 

time. 
Content thee with a visionary rhyme. 

II. 

What hand would crush the silken-winged 

%' . . 

The youngest of inconstant April's mm- 

ions. 

Because it cannot climb the purest sky. 
Where the swan sings, amid the sun's 
dominions? 

Not thine. Thou knowest 't is its doom 
to die. 
When day shall hide within her twi- 
light pinions 

The lucent eyes, and the eternal smile. 

Serene as thine, which lent it life awhile. 

III. 

To thy fair feet a winged Vision came. 
Whose date should have been longer 
than a day, 



And o'er thy head did beat its wings for 
fame, 
And in thy sight its fading plumes 
display; 

The watery bow burned in the evening 
flame, 
But the shower fell, the swift sun went 
his way — 

And that is dead. Oh, let me not be- 
lieve 

That any thing of mine is fit to live ! 

IV. 

Wordsworth informs us he was nineteen 
years 
Considering and retouching Peter 
Bell; 
Watering his laurels with the killing tears 
Of slow, dull care, so that their roots 
to hell 
Might pierce, and their wide branches 
blot the spheres 
Of heaven, with dewy leaves and 
flowers; this well 
May be, for Heaven and Earth conspire 

to foil 
The over-busy gardener's blundering toil. 

V. 

My Witch indeed is not so sweet a 

creature 
As Ruth or Lucy, whom his graceful 

praise 
Clothes for our grandsons — but she 

matches Peter, 
Tho' he took nineteen years, and 

she three days 
In dressing. Light the vest of flowing 

metre 
She wears; he, proud as dandy with 

his stays. 
Has hung upon his wiry limbs a dress 
Like King Lear's " loopt and windowed 

raggedness." 

VI. 

If you strip Peter, you will see a fellow, 
Scorcht by Hell's hyperequatorial cli- 
mate 
Into a kind of a sulphureous yellow: 



382 



THE WITCH OF A TLAS. 



A lean mark, hardly fit to fling a 
rhyme at; 
In shape a Scaramouch, in hue Othello. 
If you unveil my Witch, no priest nor 
primate 
Can shrive you of that sin, — if sin there 

be 
In love, when it becomes idolatry. 

THE WITCH OF ATLAS. 

I. 

Before those cruel Twins, whom at one 
birth 
Incestuous Change bore to her father 
Time, 
Error and Truth, had hunted from the 
Earth 
All those bright natures which adorned 
its prime, 
And left us nothing to believe in, worth 
The pains of putting into learned 
rhyme, 
A Lady-Witch there lived on Atlas' moun- 
tain 
Within a cavern, by a secret fountain. 

II. 

Her mother was one of the Atlantides : 
The all-beholding Sun had ne'er be- 
holden 
In his wide voyage o'er continents and 
seas 
So fair a creature, as she lay enfolden 
In the warm shadow of her loveliness; — 
He kist her with his beams, and 
made all golden 
The chamber of gray rock in which she 

lay — 
She, in that dream of joy, dissolved 
away. 

III. 

'Tis said, she first was changed into a 
vapor, 
And then into a cloud, such clouds as 
flit. 
Like splendor-winged moths about a 
taper, 
Round the red west when the sun dies 
in it : 
And then into a meteor, such as caper 



On hill-tops when the moon is in a 
fit: 
Then, into one of those mysterious stars 
Which hide themselves between the 
Earth and Mars. 

IV. 

Ten times the Mother of the Months had 

bent 
Her bow beside the folding-star, and 

bidden 
With that bright sign the billows to in- 
dent 
The sea-deserted sand — like children, 

chidden. 
At her command they ever came and 

went — 
Since in that cave a dewy splendor 

hidden 
Took shape and motion : with the living 

form 
Of this embodied Power, the cave grew 

warm. 

V. 

A lovely lady garmented in light 

From her own beauty — deep her eyes, 
as are 
Two openings of unfathomable night 
Seen thro' a Temple's cloven roof ; — 
her hair 
Dark — the dim brain whirls dizzy with 
delight. 
Picturing her form; her soft smiles 
shone afar, 
And her low voice was heard like love, 

and drew 
All living things towards this wonder new. 

VI. 

And first the spotted camelopard came. 
And then the wise and fearless ele- 
phant; 
Then the sly serpent, in the golden 
flame 
Of his own volumes intervolved; — all 
gaunt 
And sanguine beasts her gentle looks 
made tame. 
They drank before her at her sacred 
fount; 



THE WITCH OF ATLAS. 



383 



And every beast of beating heart grew 
bold, 

Such gentleness and power even to be- 
hold. 

VII. 

The brinded lioness led forth her young, 
That she might teach them how they 
should forego 
Their inborn thirst of death; the pard 
unstrung 
His sinews at her feet, and sought to 
know 
With looks whose motions spoke without 
a tongue 
How he might be as gentle as the 
doe. 
The magic circle of her voice and eyes 
All savage natures did imparadise. 

VIII. 

And old Silenus, shaking a green stick 

Of lilies, and the wood-gods in a crew 
Came, blithe, as in the olive copses 
thick 
Cicadse are, drunk with the noonday 
dew: 
And Dryope and Faunus followed quick. 
Teasing the God to sing them some- 
thing new; 
Till in this cave they found the lady lone, 
Sitting upon a seat of emerald stone. 

IX. 

And universal Pan, 't is said, was there, 
And tho' none saw him, — thro' the 
adamant 
Of the deep mountains, thro' the track- 
less air. 
And thro' those livui. ' its, like a 
want 
He past out of his everlasting lair 

Where the quick heart of the great 
world doth pant, 
And felt that wondrous lady all alone, — 
And she felt him, upon her emerald 
throne. 

X. 

.■* d every nymph of stream and spread- 
ing tree, 



And every shepherdess of Ocean's 
flocks, 
Who drives her white waves over the 
green sea. 
And Ocean with the brine on his gray 
locks, 
And quaint Priapus with his company, 
AH came, much wondering how the 
enwombed rocks 
Could have brought forth so beautiful a 

birth; — 
Her love subdued their wonder and their 
mirth. 

XI. 

The herdsmen and the mountain maidens 

came, 
And the rude kings of pastoral Gara- 

mant — 
Their spirits shook within them, as a 

flame 
Stirred by the air under a cavern 

gaunt : 
Pigmies, and Polyphemes, by many a 

name. 
Centaurs and Satyrs, and such shapes 

as haunt 
Wet clefts, — and lumps neither alive nor 

dead, 
Dog-headed, bosom-eyed, and bird- 
footed. 

XII. 

For she was beautiful — her beauty made 
The bright world dim, and everything 
beside 
Seemed like the fleeting image of a 
shade: 
No thought of living spirit could abide, 
Which to her looks had ever been be- 
trayed. 
On any object in the world so wide. 
On any hope within the circling skies, 
But on her form, and in her inmost eyes. 

XIII. 

Which when the Lady knew, she took 

her spindle 
And twined three threads of fleecy 

mist, and three 
Long lines of light, such as the dawn 

may kindle 



384 



THE WITCH OF ATLAS. 



The clouds and waves and mountains 

with; and she 

As many star-beams, ere their lamps 

could dwindle 

In the belated moon, wound skilfully; 

And with these threads a subtle veil she 

wove — 
A shadow for the splendor of her love. 

XIV. 

The deep recesses of her odorous dwell- 
ing 
Were stored with magic treasures — 
sounds of air, 
Which had the power all spirits of com- 
pelling. 
Folded in cells of crystal silence there; 
Such as we hear in youth, and think the 
feeling 
Will never die — yet ere we are aware. 
The feeling and the sound are fled and 

gone. 
And the regret they leave remains alone, 

XV. 

And there lay Visions swift, and sweet, 
and quaint. 
Each in its thin sheath, like a chrysalis. 
Some eager to burst forth, some weak 
and faint 
With the soft burden of intensest 
bliss; 
It was their work to bear to many a saint 
Whose heart adores the shrine which 
holiest is, 
Even Love's : — and others white, green, 

gray, and black, 
And of all shapes — and each was at her 
beck. 

XVI. 

And odors in a kind of aviary 

Of ever-blooming Eden-trees she kept, 
Clipt in a floating net, a love-sick Fairy 
Had woven from dew-beams while the 
moon yet slept; 
As bats at the wired window of a dairy, 
They beat their vans; and each was 
an adept. 
When loosed and missioned, making 

wings of winds. 
To stir sweet thoughts or sad, in destined 
minds. 



XVII. 

And liquors clear and sweet, whose 
healthful might 
Could medicine the sick soul to happy 
sleep, 
And change eternal death into a night 
Of glorious dreams — or if eyes needs 
must weep. 
Could make their tears all wonder and 
delight. 
She in her crystal vials did closely 
keep : 
If men could drink of those clear vials, 

't is said 
The living were not envied of the dead. 

XVIII. 

Her cave was stored with scrolls of 
strange device. 
The works of some Saturnian Archi- 
mage. 
Which taught the expiations at whose 
price 
Men from the Gods might win that 
happy age 
Too lightly lost, redeeming native vice; 
And which might quench the Earth- 
consuming rage 
Of gold and blood — till men should live 

and move 
Harmonious as the sacred stars above; 

XIX. 

And how all things that seem untam- 
able. 
Not to be checkt and not to be 
confined. 
Obey the spells of wisdom's wizard 
skill; 
Time, earth, and fire, the ocean and 
the wind. 
And all their shapes, and man's im- 
perial will; 
And other scrolls whose writings did 
unbind 
The inmost lore of Love — let the profane 
Tremble to ask what secrets they contain. 

XX. 

And wondrous works of substances un- 
known, 



THE WirCH OF ATLAS. 



385 



To which the enchantment of her 
father's power 
Had changed those ragged blocks of 
savage stone, 
Were heapt in the recesses of her 
bower; 
Carved lamps and chalices, and vials 
which shone 
In their own golden beams — each like 
a flower, 
Out of whose depth a fire-fly shakes his 

light 
Under a cypress in a starless night. 

XXI. 

At first she lived alone in this wild home. 
And her own thoughts were each a 
minister, 
Clothing themselves, or with the ocean 
foam. 
Or with the wind, or with the speed 
of fire, 
To work whatever purposes might come 
Into her mind; such power her mighty 
Sire 
Had girt them with, whether to fly or 

run. 
Through all the regions which he shines 
upon. 

XXII. 

The Ocean-nymphs and Hamadryades, 
Oreads and Naiads, with long weedy 
locks, 
Offered to do her bidding thro' the 
seas. 
Under the earth, and in the hollow 
rocks. 
And far beneath the matted roots of 
trees. 
And in the gnarled heart of stubborn 
oaks, 
So they might live for ever in the light 
Of her sweet presence — each a satellite. 

XXIII. 

"This may not be," the Wizard Maid 

replied ; 
" The fountains where the Naiades 

bedew 
Their shining hair, at length are drained 

and dried; 



The solid oaks forget their strength, 

and strew 
Their latest leaf upon the mountains 

wide; 
The boundless ocean like a drop of 

dew . 

Will be consumed — the stubborn centre 

must 
Be scattered, like a cloud of summer 

dust. 

XXIV. 

"And ye with them will perish, one by 
one; — 
If I must sigh to think that this shall 
be. 
If I must weep when the surviving Sun 
Shall smile on your decay — oh, ask 
not me 
To love you till your little race is run; 

I cannot die as ye must — over me 
Your leaves shall glance — the streams 

in which ye dwell 
Shall be my paths henceforth, and 30 — 
farewell ! — 

XXV. 

She spoke and wept : — the dark and 
azure well 
Sparkled beneath the shower of her 
bright tears, 
And every little circlet where they fell 
Flung to the cavern-roof inconstant 
spheres 
And intertangled lines of light : — a 
knell 
Of sobbing voices came upon her ears 
From those departing Forms, o'er the 

serene 
Of the white streams and of the forest 
green. 

XXVI. 

All day the Wizard Lady sate aloof. 

Spelling out scrolls of dread antiquity, 
Under the cavern's fountain-lighted roof; 

Or broidering the pictured poesy 
Of some high tale upon her growing 
woof. 
Which the sweet splendor of her 
smiles could dye 



386 



THE WITCH OF Al^LAS. 



In hues outshining Heaven — and ever 

she 
Added some grace to the wrought poesy. 

XXVII. 

While on her hearth lay blazing many a 
piece 
Of sandal-wood, rare gums, and cin- 
namon; 
Men scarcely know how beautiful fire 
is — 
Each flame of it is as a precious stone 
Dissolved in ever-moving light, and this 
Belongs to each and all who gaze 
upon. 
The Witch beheld it not, for in her hand 
She held a woof that dimmed the burn- 
ing brand. 

XXVIII. 

This Lady never slept, but lay in trance 
All night within the fountain — as in 

sleep. 
Its emerald crags glowed in her beauty's 

glance; 
Thro' the green splendor of the water 

deep 
She saw the constellations reel and dance 
Like fire-flies — and withal did ever 

keep 
The tenor of her contemplations calm. 
With open eyes, closed feet and folded 

palm. 

XXIX. 

And when the whirlwinds and the clouds 
descended 

From the white pinnacles of that cold 
hill, 
She past at dewfall to a space extended, 

Where in a lawn of flowering asphodel 
Amid a wood of pines and cedars blended. 

There yawned an inextinguishable well 
Of crimson fire — full even to the brim. 
And overflowing all the margin trim. 

XXX. 

Within the which she lay when the 
fierce war 
Of wintry winds shook that innocuous 
liquor 



In many a mimic moon and bearded star 
O'er woods and lawns; — the serpent 
heard it flicker 

In sleep, and dreaming still, he crept 
afar — 
And when the windless snow de- 
scended thicker 

Than autumn leaves, she watcht it as 
it came 

Melt on the surface of the level flame. 

XXXI. 

She had a Boat, which some say Vulcan 
wrought 
For Venus, as the chariot of her star; 
But it was found too feeble to be fraught 
With all the ardors in that sphere 
which are, 
And so she sold it, and Apollo bought 
And gave it to this daughter: from a 
car 
Changed to the fairest and the lightest 

boat 
Which ever upon mortal stream did 
float. 

XXXII. 

And others say, that, when but three 
hours old. 
The first-born Love out of his cradle 
leapt, 
And clove dun Chaos with his wings of 
gold. 
And like a horticultural adept. 
Stole a strange seed, and wrapt it up in 
mould. 
And sowed it in his mother's star, and 
kept 
Watering it all the summer with sweet 

dew. 
And with his wings fanning it as it grew. 

XXXIII. 

The plant grew strong and green, the 
snowy flower 
Fell, and the long and gourd -like 
fruit began 
To turn the light and dew by inward 
power 
To its own substance; woven tracery 
ran 



THE WITCH OF ATLAS. 



387 



Of light firm texture, ribbed and branch- 
ing, o'er 
The solid rind, like a leaf's veined 
fan — 

Of which Love scoopt this boat — and 
with soft motion 

Piloted it round the circumfluous ocean. 

XXXIV. 

'^l his boat she moored upon her fount, 
and lit 
A living spirit within all its frame, 
Breathing the soul of swiftness into it. 
Coucht on the fountain like a 
panther tame. 
One of the twain at Evan's feet that sit — 
Or a&on Vesta's sceptre a swift flame — 
Or on blind Homer's heart a winged 

thought, — 
In joyous expectation lay the boat. 

XXXV. 

'^Then by strange art she kneaded fire and 
snow 
Together, tempering the repugnant 
mass 
With liquid love — all things together 
grow 
Thro' which the harmony of love can 
pass; 
And a fair Shape out of her hands did 
flow — 
A living Image, which did far surpass 
In beauty that bright shape of vital stone 
Which drew the heart out of Pygmalion. 

XXXVI. 

A sexless thing it was, and in its growth 

It seemed to have developt no defect 
Of either sex, yet all the grace of both, — 
In gentleness and strength its limbs 
were deckt; 
The bosom lightly swelled with its full 
youth, 
The countenance was such as might 
select 
Some artist that his skill should never die, 
Imaging forth such perfect purity. 

XXXVII. 

From its smooth shoulders hung two rapid 
wings, 



Fit to have borne it to the seventh sphere 
Tipt with the speed of liquid lightnings, 

Dyed in the ardors of the atmosphere : 

She led her creature to the boiling springs 

Where the light boat was moored, and 

said: "Sit here! " 

And pointed to the prow, and took her 

seat 
Beside the rudder, with opposing feet. 

XXXVIII. 

And down the streams which clove those 
mountains vast, 
Around their inland islets, and amid 
The panther-peopled forests, whose shade 
cast 
Darkness and odors, and a pleasure hid 
In melancholy gloom, the pinnace past; 

By many a star-surrounded pyramid 
Of icy crag cleaving the purple sky. 
And caverns yawning round unfathoma- 
bly. 

XXXIX. 

The silver noon into the winding dell, 
With slanted gleam athwart the forest 
tops. 
Tempered like golden evening, feebly 
fell; 
A green and glowing light, like that 
which drops 
From folded lilies in which glow-worms 
dwell, 
When earth over her face night's man- 
tle wraps; 
Between the severed mountains lay on 

high. 
Over the stream, a narrow rift of sky. 

XL. 

And ever as she went, the Image lay 
With folded wings and unawakened 
eyes; 
And o'er its gentle countenance did play 
The busy dreams, as thick as summer 
flies. 
Chasing the rapid smiles that would not 
stay. 
And drinking the warm tears, and the 
sweet sighs 
Inhaling, which, with busy murmur vain, 
They had aroused from that full heart and 
brain. 



388 



THE WITCH OF ATLAS. 



XLI. 

And ever down the prone vale, like a 
cloud 
Upon a stream of wind, the pinnace 
went: 

Now lingering on the pools, in which 
abode 
The calm and darkness of the deep 
content 

In which they paused; now o'er the shal- 
low road 
Of white and dancing waters, all be- 
sprent 

With sand and polisht pebbles: — mor- 
tal boat 

In such a shallow rapid could not float. 

XLII. 

And down the earthquaking cataracts 
which shiver 
Their snow-like waters into golden air. 
Or under chasms unfathomable ever 
Sepulchre them, till in their rage they 
tear 
A subterranean portal for the river, 
It fled — the circling sunbows did up- 
bear 
Its fall down the hoar precipice of spray. 
Lighting it far upon its lampless way. 

XLIII. 

And when the Wizard Lady would ascend 
The labyrinths of some many-winding 
vale, 
Which to the inmost mountain upward 
tend — 
She called " Hermaphroditus ! " — and 
the pale 
And heavy hue which slumber could ex- 
tend 
Over its lips and eyes, as on the gale 
A rapid shadow from a slope of grass. 
Into the darkness of the stream did pass. 

XLIV. 

And it unfurled its heaven-colored pin- 
ions, 
With stars of fire spotting the stream 
below ; 



And from above into the Sun's dominions 
Flinging a glory, like the golden glow 
In which Spring clothes her emerald- 
winged minions. 
All interwoven with fine feathery snow 
And moonlight splendor of intensestrime. 
With which frost paints the pines in win- 
ter time. 

XLV. 

And then it winnowed the Elysian air 

Which ever hung about that Lady bright, 
With its ethereal vans — and speeding 
there. 
Like a star up the torrent of the night, 
Or a swift eagle in the morning glare 
Breasting the whirlwind with 'impetu- 
ous flight, 
The pinnace, oared by those enchanted 

wings. 
Clove the fierce streams towards their 
upper springs. 

XLVI. 

The water flasht like sunlight by the 
prow 
Of a noon-wandering meteor flung to 
Heaven; 
The still air seemed as if its waves did 
flow 
In tempest down the mountains; loose- 
ly driven 
The Lady's radiant hair streamed to and 
fro: 
Beneath, the billows having vainly 
striven 
Indignant and impetuous, roared to feel 
The swift and steady motion of the keel. 

XLVII. 

Or, when the weary moon was in the 
wane. 
Or in the noon of interlunar night, 
The Lady- Witch in visions could not chain 
Her spirit; but sailed forth under the 
light 
Of shooting stars, and bade extend amain 
Its storm-outspeeding wings the Her- 
maphrodite; 
She to the Austral waters took her way, 
Beyond the fabulous Thamondocana; 



THE WITCH OF ATLAS. 



389 



XLVIII. 

Where, like a meadow which no scythe 
has shaven, 
Which rain could never bend, or whirl- 
blast shake. 
With the Antarctic constellations paven, 
Canopus and his crew, lay the Austral 
lake — 
There she would build herself a windless 
haven 
Out of the clouds whose moving turrets 
make 
The bastions of the storm, when thro' 

the sky 
The spirits of the tempest thundered by; 

XLIX. 

A haven beneath whose translucent floor 
The tremulous stars sparkled unfath- 
omably, 

And around which the solid vapors hoar. 
Based on the level waters, to the sky 

Lifted their dreadful crags, and like a 
shore 
Of wintry mountains, inaccessibly 

Hemmed in with rifts and precipices gray. 

And hanging crags, many a cove and bay. 



And whilst the outer lake beneath the 
lash 
Of the wind's scourge, foamed like a 
wounded thing 
And the incessant hail with stony clash 
Ploughed up the waters, and the flag- 
ging wing 
Of the roused cormorant in the lightning 
flash 
Lookt like the wreck of some wind- 
wandering 
Fragment of inky thunder-smoke — this 

haven 
Was as a gem to copy Heaven engraven. 

LI. 

On which that Lady played her many 
pranks, 
Circling the image of a shooting star, 
Even as a tiger on Hydaspes' banks 
Outspeeds the antelopes which speed- 
iest are. 



In her light boat; and many quips and 
cranks 
She played upon the water, till the car 
Of the late moon, like a sick matron wan, 
To journey from the misty east began. 

LII. 

And then she called out of the hollow 
turrets 
Of those high clouds, white, gold&n 
and vermilion. 
The armies of her ministering spirits — 

In mighty legions, million after million, 
They came, each troop emblazoning its 
merits 
On meteor flags; and many a proud 
pavilion 
Of the intertexture of the atmosphere 
They pitcht upon the plain of the calm 
mere. 

LIII. 

They framed the imperial tent of their 
great Queen 
Of woven exhalations, underlaid 
With lambent lightning-fire, as may be 
seen 
A dome of thin and open ivory inlaid 
With crimson silk — cressets from the 
serene 
Hung there, and on the water for her 
tread 
A tapestry of fleece-like mist was strewn. 
Dyed in the beams of the ascending moon. 

LIV. 

And on a throne o'erlaid with starlight, 
caught 
Upon those wandering isles of aery 
dew. 

Which highest shoals of mountain ship- 
wreck not, 
She sate, and heard all that had hap- 
pened new. 

Between the earth and moon, since they 
had brought 
The last intelligence — and now she 
grew 

Pale as that moon, lost in the watery 
night — 

And now she wept, and now she laught 
outright. 



390 



THE WITCH OF ATLAS. 



LV. 

These were tame pleasures; she would 
often climb 
The steepest ladder of the crudded rack 
Up to some beaked cape of cloud sublime, 
And like Arion on the dolphin's back 
Ride singing through the shoreless air; — 
oft-time 
Following the serpent lightning's 
winding track, 
She ran upon the platforms of the wind, 
And laught to hear the fire-balls roar 
behind. 

LVI. 

And sometimes to those streams of upper 

air 
Which whirl the earth in its diurnal 

round, 
She would ascend, and win the spirits 

there 
To let her join their chorus. Mortals 

found 
That on those days the sky was calm and 

fair, 
And mystic snatches of harmonious 

sound 
Wandered upon the earth where'er she 

past. 
And happy thoughts of hope, too sweet 

to last. 

LVII. 

But her choice sport was, in the hours of 
sleep. 
To glide adown old Nilus, where he 
threads 
Egypt and /Ethiopia, from the steep 

Of utmost Axume, until he spreads. 
Like a calm flock of silver-fleeced sheep. 
His waters on the plain: and crested 
heads 
Of cities and proud temples gleam amid. 
And many a vapor-belted pyramid. 

LVIII. 

By Moeris and the Mareotid lakes, 

Strewn with faint blooms like bridal- 
chamber floors. 
Where naked boys bridling tame water- 
snakes, 
Or charioteering ghastly alligators, 



Had left on the sweet waters mighty 

wakes 
Of those huge forms — within the 

brazen doors 
Of the great Labyrinth slept both boy 

and beast. 
Tired with the pomp of their Osirian 

feast. 

LIX. 

And where within the surface of the river 
The shadows of the massy temples lie, 
And never are erased — but tremble ever 
Like things which every cloud can 
doom to die, 
Thro' lotus-paven canals, and where- 
soever 
The works of man pierced that se- 
renest sky 
With tombs, and towers, and fanes, 

't was her delight 
To wander in the shadow of the night. 

LX. 

With motion like the spirit of that wind 
Whose soft step deepens slumber, her 
light feet 
Past through the peopled haunts of hu- 
man kind, 
Scattering sweet visions from her pres- 
ence sweet. 
Through fane, and palace-court, and laby- 
rinth mined 
With many a dark and subterranean 
street 
Under the Nile, thro' chambers high 

and deep 
She past, observing mortals in their sleep. 

LXI. 

A pleasure sweet doubtless it was to see 
Mortals subdued in all the shapes of 
sleep. 
Here lay two sisters twins in infancy; 
There, a lone youth who in his dreams 
did weep; 
Within, two lovers linked innocently 
In their loose locks which over both 
did creep 
Like ivy from one stem; — and there lay 
calm 



THE WITCH OF ATLAS. 



391 



Old age with snow-bright hair and folded 
palm. 

LXII. 

But other troubled forms of sleep she 
saw, 
Not to be mirrored in a holy song — 
Distortions foul of supernatural awe, 

And pale imaginings of visioned wrong ; 

And all the code of custom's lawless law 

Written upon the brows of old and 

young : 

"This," said the Wizard Maiden, " is the 

strife 
Which stirs the liquid surface of man's 
life." 

LXIII. 

And little did the sight disturb her soul. — 
We, the weak mariners of that wide 
lake 
Where'er its shores extend or billows 
roll, 
Our course unpiloted and starless make 
O'er its wild surface to an unknown 
goal: — 
But she in the calm depths her way 
could take. 
Wherein bright bowers immortal forms 

abide 
Beneath the weltering of the restless tide. 

LXIV. 

And she saw princes coucht under the 
glow 
Of sunlike gems; and round each tem- 
ple-court 
In dormitories ranged, row after row. 
She saw the priests asleep — all of one 
sort — 
For all were educated to be so. — 

The peasants in their huts, and in the 
port 
The sailors she saw cradled on the waves. 
And the dead lulled within their dream- 
less graves. 

LXV. 

And all the forms in which those spirits 
lay 
Were to her sight like the diaphanous 



Veils, in which those sweet ladies oft 
array 
Their delicate limbs, who would con- 
ceal from us 

Only their scorn of all concealment: they 
Move in the light of their own beauty 
thus. 

But these and all now lay with sleep upon 
them. 

And little thought a Witch was looking 
on them. 

LXVI. 

She, all those human figures breathing 
there. 
Beheld as living spirits — to her eyes 
The naked beauty of the soul lay bare. 
And often thro' a rude and worn 
disguise 
She saw the inner form most bright and 
fair — 
And then she had a charm of strange 
device. 
Which, murmured on mute lips with ten- 
der tone. 
Could make that spirit mingle with her 
own. 

LXVII. 

Alas ! Aurora, what wouldst thou have 
given 
For such a charm when Tithon became 
gray? 

Or how much, Venus, of thy silver Heav- 
en 
Wouldst thou have yielded, ere Proser- 
pina 

Had half (oh ! why not all ?) the debt for- 
given 
Which dear Adonis had been doomed 
to pay. 

To any witch who would have taught 
you it? 

The Heliad doth not know its value yet. 

LXVIII. 

'Tis said in after times her spirit free 
Knew what love was, and felt itself 
alone — 

But holy Dian could not chaster be 
Before she stooped to kiss Endymion, 

Than now this lady — like a sexless bee 



392 



THE WITCH OF ATLAS. 



Tasting all blossoms, and confined to 
none, 

Among those mortal forms, the Wizard- 
Maiden 

Past with an eye serene and heart un- 
laden. 

LXIX. 

To those she saw most beautiful, she gave 

Strange panacea in a crystal bowl : — 
They drank in their deep sleep of that 
sweet wave, 
And lived thenceforward as if some 
control. 
Mightier than life, were in them; and 
the grave 
Of such, when death opprest the weary 
soul, 
Was as a green and overarching bower 
Lit by the gems of many a starry flower. 

LXX. 

For on the night when they were buried, 
she 
Restored the embalmers' ruining, and 
shook 
The light out of the funeral lamps, to be 
A mimic day within that deathy nook; 
And she unwound the woven imagery 
Of second childhood's swaddling - 
bands, and took 
The coffin, its last cradle, from its niche. 
And threw it with contempt into a ditch. 

LXXI. 

And there the body lay, age after age, 
Mute, breathing, beating, warm, and 
undecaying. 
Like one asleep in a green hermitage. 
With gentle smiles about its eyelids 
. playing. 
And living in its dreams beyond the rage 
Of death or life; while they were still 
arraying 
In liveries ever new, the rapid, blind 
And fleeting generations of mankind. 

LXXII. 

And she would write strange dreams upon 
the brain 
Of those who were less beautiful, and 
make 



All harsh and crooked purposes more vain | 
Than in the desert is the serpent's wake 
Which the sand covers; — all his evil gain 
The miser in such dreams would rise 
and shake 
Into a beggar's lap; — the lying scribe 
Would his own lies betray without a 
bribe. 

LXXIII. 

The priests would write an explanation 

full, ; 

Translating hieroglyphics into Greek, ; 
How the god Apis really was a bull, | 
And nothing more; and bid the herald ' 
stick I 

The same against the temple doors, and [ 
pull 
The old cant down; they licensed all 
to speak 
Whate'er they thought of hawks, and ' 
cats, and geese, I 

By pastoral letters to each diocese. { 

LXXIV. [ 

The king would dress an ape up in his 

crown i 

And robes, and seat him on his glori- ' 

ous seat, | 

And on the right hand of the sunlike ; 

throne '■. 

Would place a gaudy mock-bird to re- j 

peat I 

The chatterings of the monkey. — Every I 

one I 

Of the prone courtiers crawled to kiss j 

the feet \ 

Of their great Emperor, when the morn- j 

ing came, j 

And kist — alas, how many kiss the 

same ! | 

LXXV. 

The soldiers dreamed that they were | 
l)lacksmiths, and 
Walkt out of quarters in somnam- 
bulism; 
Round the red anvils you might see them 
stand 
Like Cyclopses in Vulcan's sooty 
abysm, 



NOTE ON THE WITCH OF ATLAS. 



393 



Beating their swords to ploughshares; — 

in a band 
The gaolers sent those of the liberal 

schism 
Free through the streets of Memphis, 

much, I wis 
To the annoyance of king Amasis. 

LXXVI. 

And timid lovers who had been so coy, 
They hardly knew whether they loved 

or not. 
Would rise out of their rest, and take 

sweet joy. 
To the fulfilment of their inmost 

thought; 
And when next day the maiden and the 

boy 
Met one another, both, like sinners 

caught, 
Blusht at the thing which each believed 

was done 
Only in fancy — till the tenth moon 

shone; 

LXXVII. 

And then the Witch would let them take 
no ill : 
Of many thousand schemes which lov- 
ers find. 
The Witch found one, — and so they 
took their fill 
Of happiness in marriage warm and 
kind. 
Friends who, by practice of some envious 
skill. 
Were torn apart, a wide wound, mind 
from mind ! 
She did unite again with visions clear 
Of deep affection and of truth sincere. 

LXXVIII. 

These were the pranks she played among 
the cities 
Of mortal men, and what she did to 
sprites 
And gods, entangling them in her sweet 
ditties 
To do her will, and show their subtle 
slights, 
I will declare another time; for it is 



A tale more fit for the weird winter 

nights. 
Than for these garish summer days, when 

we 
Scarcely believe much more than we can 

see. 



NOTE ON THE "WITCH OF 
ATLAS," BY MRS. SHELLEY. 

We spent the summer of 1820 at the 
Baths of San Giuliano, four miles from 
Pisa. These baths were of great use to 
Shelley in soothing his nervous irritability. 
We made several excursions in the neigh- 
borhood. The country around is fertile, 
and diversified and rendered picturesque 
by ranges of near hills and more distant 
mountains. The peasantry are a hand- 
some, intelligent race; and there was a 
gladsome sunny heaven spread over us, 
that rendered home and every scene we 
visited cheerful and bright. During some 
of the hottest days of August, Shelley 
made a solitary journey on foot to the 
summit of Monte San Pellegrino — a 
mountain of some height, on the top of 
which there is a chapel, the object, dur- 
ing certain days of the year, of many 
pilgrimages. The excursion delighted 
him while it lasted; though he exerted 
himself too much, and the effect was 
considerable lassitude and weakness on 
his return. During the expedition he 
conceived the idea, and wrote, in the 
three days immediately succeeding to his 
return, the " Witch of Atlas." This poem 
is peculiarly characteristic of his tastes 
— wildly fanciful, full of brilliant im- 
agery, and discarding human interest and 
passion, to revel in the fantastic ideas 
that his imagination suggested. 

The surpassing excellence of "The 
Cenci " had made me greatly desire that 
Shelley should increase his popularity by 
adopting subjects that would more suit 
the popular taste than a poem conceived 
in the abstract and dreamy spirit of the 
" Witch of Atlas." It was not only that I 
wished him to acquire popularity as re- 
dounding to his fame; but I believed 
that he would obtain a greater mastery 



394 



(ED IP US TYRANNUS ; OR 



over his own powers, and greater happi- 
ness in his mind, if pubUc applause 
crowned his endeavors. The few stan- 
zas that precede the poem were addressed 
to me on mj representing these ideas to 
him. Even now I believe that I was in 
the right. Shelley did not expect sym- 
pathy and approbation from the public; 
but the want of it took away a portion 
of the ardor that ought to have sustained 
him while writing. He was thrown on 
his own resources, and on the inspiration 
of his own soul; and wrote because his 
mind overflowed, without the hope of 
being appreciated. I had not the most 
distant wish that he should truckle in 
opinion, or submit his lofty aspirations 
for the human race to the low ambition 
and pride of the many; but I felt sure 
that, if his poems were more addressed 
to the common feelings of men, his proper 
rank among the writers of the day would 
be acknowledged, and that popularity as 
a poet would enable his countrymen to 
do justice to his character and virtues, 
which in those days it was the mode to 
attack with the most flagitious calumnies 
and insulting abuse. That he felt these 
things deeply cannot be doubted, though 
he armed himself with the consciousness 
of acting from a lofty and heroic sense of 
right. The truth burst from his heart 
sometimes in solitude, and he would write 
a few unfinished verses that showed that 
he felt the sting; among such I find the 
following: — 

' Alas ! this is not what I thought Life was. 

I knew that there were crimes and evil men, 
Misery and hate ; nor did I hope to pass 

Untoucht by suffering through the rugged 
glen. 
In mine own heart I saw as in a glass 

The hearts of others. . . . And, when 
I went among my kind, with triple brass 

Of calm endurance my weak breast I armed, 
To bear scorn, fear, and hate — a woful mass ! " 

I believed that all this morbid feeling 
would vanish if the chord of sympathy 
between him and his countrymen were 
touched. But my persuasions were vain, 
the mind could not be bent from its nat- 
ural inclination. Shelley shrunk instinc- 
tively from portraying human passion, 
with its mixture of good and evil, of dis- 



appointment and disquiet. Such opened 
again the wounds of his own heart; and 
he Ipved to shelter himself rather in the 
airiest flights of fancy, forgetting love 
and hate, and regret and lost hope, in 
such imaginations as borrowed their hues 
from sunrise or sunset, from the yellow 
moonshine or paly twilight, from the as- 
pect of the far ocean or the shadows of 
the woods, — which celebrated the sing- 
ing of the winds among the pines, the 
flow of a murmuring stream, and the 
thousand harmonious sounds which Na- 
ture creates in her solitudes. These are 
the materials which form the "Witch of 
Atlas;" it is a brilliant congregation of 
ideas such as his senses gathered, and his 
fancy colored, during his rambles in the 
sunny land he so much loved. 



CEDIPUS TYRANNUS; 

OR 

SWELLFOOT THE TYRANT, 

A TRAGEDY 

IN TWO ACTS. 

Translated from the Original 
Doric. 

" Choose Reform or civil war, 
When thro' thy streets, instead of hare with dogs, 
A Consort-Queen shall hunt a King with hogs, 
Riding on the IONIAN MINOTAUR. 



ADVERTISEMENT. 

This Tragedy is one of a triad, or 
system of three Plays (an arrangement 
according to which the Greeks were ac- 
customed to connect their dramatic repre- 
sentations), elucidating the wonderful 
and appalling fortunes of the Swell- 
foot dynasty. It was evidently written 
by some learned 77iel>an, and, from its 
characteristic dulness, apparently before 
the duties on the importation of AtHc 
salth?i6. been repealed by the Boeotarchs. 
The tenderness with which he treats 



SWELLFOOT THE TYRANT. 



395 



the PIGS proves him to have been a 
sus Bceotice ; possibly Epiciiri de grege 
poj'cus ; for, as the poet observes, 

" A fellow feeling makes us wondrous kind." 

No liberty has been taken with the 
translation of this remarkable piece of 
antiquity, except the suppressing a sedi- 
tious and blasphemous Chorus of the 
Pigs and Bulls at the last act. The word 
Hoydipouse (or more properly Qidipus), 
has been rendered literally Swellfoot, 
without its having been conceived neces- 
sary to determine whether a swelling of 
the hind or the fore feet of the Swinish 
Monarch is particularly indicated. 

Should the remaining portions of this 
Tragedy be found, entitled, "Swellfoot 
in Angaria," and " Charite," the Trans- 
lator might be tempted to give them to 
the reading Public. 



CEDIPUS TYRANNUS. 

DRAMATIS PERSONS. 

Tyrant Swellfoot, Kifig of Thebes. 

loNA TPi.VRmA, his Q7ieen. 

Mammon, Arch-Priest of Fatnine. 

purganax, 

Dakry, 

Laoctonos 



Wizards, ^litiisters of 
Swellfoot. 1 



The Gadfly. 
The Leech. 
The Rat. 



Moses, the Sow-gelder. 
Solomon, the Porkmaii. 
Zephaniah, Pig Butcher. 



The Minotaur. 

Chorals of the Sivinish JMultitude. 

Guards, Attendants, Priests, etc. 

SCENE.— THEBES. 

ACT I. 

SCENE \.— A magnificent Temple, 
built of thigh-bones mid death"" s heads, 
and tiled with scalps. Over the Altar 
the statue of Famine, veiled ; a num- 
ber of boars, sows, and sucking pigs, 
crcnvned with thistle, shamrock, and 
oak, sitting on the steps, and clinging 
round the altar of the Temple, 

1 Purganax, Lord Castlereagh, Dakry, Lord 
Eidon, Laoctonos, Duke of Wellington. 



Enter Swellfoot, in his Royal robes, 
ivithout perceiving the PiGS. 

Swellfoot. Thou supreme Goddess ! 
by whose power divine 

These graceful limbs are clothed in 
proud array 

\^He contemplates hi/nself zuith satis- 
faction. 

Of gold and purple, and this kingly 
paunch 

Swells like a sail before a favoring 
breeze. 

And these most sacred nether promon- 
tories 

Lie satisfied with layers of fat; and 
these 

Boeotian cheeks, like Egypt's pyramid, 

(Nor with less toil were their founda- 
tions laid,-) 

Sustain the cone of my untroubled brain, 

That point, the emblem of a pointless 
nothing ! 

Thou to whom Kings and laurelled 
Emperors, 

Radical-butchers, Paper-money-millers, 

Bishops and deacons, and the entire 
army 

Of those fat martyrs to the persecution 

Of stifling turtle-soup, and brandy-devils. 

Offer their secret vows ! Thou plenteous 
Ceres 

Of their Eleusis, hail ! 

The Swi}ie. Eigh ! eigh ! eigh ! eigh ! 
Swellfoot. Ha ! what are ye. 

Who, crowned with leaves devoted to 
the Furies, 

Cling round this sacred shrine ? 
Swine. Aigh ! aigh ! aigh ! 
Swellfoot. What ! ye that are 

The very beasts that, offered at her altar 

With blood and groans, salt-cake, and 
fat, and inwards, 

Ever propitiate her reluctant will 

When taxes are withheld? 
Swine. Ugh ! ugh ! ugh ! 
Szuellfoot. What ! ye who grub 

With filthy snouts my red potatoes up 

In Allan's rushy bog? Who eat the oats 

2 See Universal History for an account of the 
number of people who died, and the immense 
consumption of garlic by the wTetched Egyp- 
tians, who made a sepulchre for the name as 
well as the bodies of their tyrants. 



396 



(ED I PUS TYRANNUS ; OR 



Up, from my cavalry in the Hebrides? 
Who swill the hog-wash soup my cooks 

digest 
From bones, and rags, and scraps of 

shoe-leather, 
Which should be given to cleaner Pigs 

than you? 

The Swine. — SemicJiorus I. 

The same, alas ! the same ; 

Though only now the name 

Of Pig remains to me. 

Semichorus II. 

If 't were your kingly will 
Us wretched Swine to kill, 

What should we yield to thee? 
Swellfoot. Why, skin and bones, and 
some few hairs for mortar. 

Chorus of Swine. 

I have heard your Laureate sing, 
That pity was a royal thing; 
Under your mighty ancestors, we Pigs 
Were blest as nightingales on myrtle 

sprigs. 
Or grasshoppers that live on noonday 

dew, 
And sung, old annals tell, as sweetly too. 
But now our sties are fallen in, we catch 
The murrain and the mange, the scab 

and itch; 
Sometimes your royal dogs tear down 

our thatch. 
And then we seek the shelter of a 

ditch; 
Hog-wash or grains, or rutabaga, none 
Has yet been ours since your reign 

begun. 

First Sow. 

My Pigs, 't is in vain to tug. 

Second Soiv. 

I could almost eat my litter. 

First Pig. 

I suck, but no milk will come from 
the dug. 

Second Pig. 

Our skin and our bones would be 
bitter. 

The Boars. 

We fight for this rag of greasy rug. 



Though a trough of wash would be 

fitter. 

Semichorus. 
Happier Swine were they than we. 
Drowned in the Gadarean sea — 
I wish that pity would drive out the 

devils, 
Which in your royal bosom hold their 

revels, 
And sink us in the waves of thy com- 
passion ! 
Alas ! the Pigs are an unhappy nation ! 
Now if your Majesty would have our 

bristles 
To bind your mortar with, or fill our 

colons 
With rich blood, or make brawn out of 

our gristles. 
In policy — ask else your royal 

Solons — 
You ought to give us hog-wash and clean 

straw, 
And sties well thatcht; besides it is the 

law ! 
Swellfoot. This is i^edition, and rank 

blasphemy ! 
Ho ! there, my guards ! 

Enter a Guard. 
Guard. Your sacred Majesty. 

Swellfoot. Call in the Jews, Solomon 
the court porkman, 
Moses the sow-gelder, and Zephaniah 
The hog-butcher. 

Guard. They are in waiting, Sire. 
Enter Solomon, Moses, and 
Zephaniah, 
Swellfoot. Out with your knife, old 

Moses, and spay those Sows, 
[ The pigs run about in consternation. 
That load the earth with Pigs; cut close 

and deep, 
Moral restraint I see has no effect. 
Nor prostitution, nor our own example, 
Starvation, typhus-.fever,- war, nor 

prison — 
This was the art which the arch-priest 

of Famine 
Hinted at in his charge to the Theban 

clergy — 
Cut close and deep, good Moses. 

Moses. Let your Majesty 

Keep the boars quiet, else — 



SWELLFOOT THE TYRANT. 



397 



Swellfoot. Zephaniah, cut 

That fat Hog's throat, the brute seems 

overfed; 
Seditious hunks ! to whine for want of 
grains. 
Zephaniah. Your sacred Majesty, he 
has the dropsy; — 
We shall find pints of hydatids in 's liver, 
He has not half an inch of wholesome fat 
Upon his carious ribs — 

Szvellfoot. 'T is all the same, 

He '11 serve instead of riot money, when 
Our murmuring troops bivouac in Thebes' 

streets; 
And January winds, after a day 
Of butchering, will make them relish 

carrion. 
Now, Solomon, I'll sell you in a lump 
The whole kit of them. 

Solcvnon. Why, your Majesty, 

I could not give — 

Szvellfoot. Kill them out of 

the way, 
That shall be price enough, and let me 

hear 
Their everlasting grunts and whines no 
more ! 

{^Exeunt, driving in the swine. 

Enter Mammon, the Arch-Priest ; and 
PURGANAX, Chief of the Council of 
Wizards. 

Purganax, The future looks as black 
as death, a cloud. 

Dark as the frown of Hell, hangs over 
it. 

The troops grow mutinous — the revenue 
fails — 

There 's something rotten in us — for the 
level 

Of the State slopes, its very bases topple, 

The boldest turn their backs upon them- 
selves ! 
Mammon. Why what 's the matter, 
my dear fellow, now? 

Do the troops mutiny? — decimate some 
regiments; 

Does money fail? — come to my mint — 
coin paper, 

Till gold be at a discount, and ashamed 

To show his bilious face, go purge him- 
self, 
In emulation of her vestal whitenesSo 



Purganax. Oh, would that this were 

all ! The oracle ! ! 
Afammon. Why it was I who spoke 

that oracle, 
And whether I was dead-drunk or in- 
spired, 
I cannot well remember; nor, in truth. 
The oracle itself ! 

Purganax. The words went thus : — 
" Boeotia, choose reform or civil war ! 
When thro' thy streets, instead of hare 

with dogs, 
A Consort Queen shall hunt a King with 

hogs. 
Riding on the Ionian Minotaur." 

Alammon. Now if the oracle had 

ne'er foretold 
This sad alternative, it must arrive. 
Or not, and so it must now that it has, 
And whether I was urged by grace 

divine, 
Or Lesbian liquor to declare these words, 
Which must, as all words must, be false 

or true; 
It matters not : for the same power made 

all, 
Oracle, wine, and me and you — or 

none — 
'T is the same thing. If you knew as 

much 
Of oracles as I do — 

Purganax. . You arch -priests 

Believe in nothing; if you were to dream 
Of a particular number in the Lottery, 
You would not buy the ticket? 

Mammon. Yet our tickets 

Are seldom blanks. But what steps have 

you taken? 
For prophecies when once they get 

abroad, 
Like liars who tell the truth to serve 

their ends. 
Or hypocrites who, from assuming virtue, 
Do the same actions that the virtuous do, 
Contrive their own fulfilment. This 

lona — 
Well — you know what the chaste Pasi- 

phae did. 
Wife to that most religious King of 

Crete, 
And still how popular the tale is here; 
And these dull Swine of Thebes boast 

their descent 



398 



(ED I PUS TYR ANNUS'; OR 



From the free Minotaur, You know 

they still 
Call themselves Bulls, though thus de- 
generate, 
Ancf everything relating to a Bull 
Is popular and respectable in Thebes. 
Their arms are seven Bulls in a field 

gules, 
They think their strength consists in 

eating beef; — 
Now there were danger in the precedent 
If Queen lona — 

Purgaiiax. I have taken good care 
That shall not be. I struck the crust 

o' the earth 
With this enchanted rod, and Hell lay 

bare ! 
And from a cavern full of ugly shapes, 
I chose a Leech, a Gadfly, and a Rat. 
The gadfly was the same which Juno sent 
To agitate lo,^ and which Ezekiel - men- 
tions 
That the Lord whistled for out of the 

mountains 
Of utmost Ethiopia, to torment 
Mesopotamian Babylon. The beast 
Has a loud trumpet like the Scarabee, 
His crooked tail is barbed with many 

stings. 
Each able to make a thousand wounds, 

and each 
Immedicable; from his convex eyes 
He sees fair things in many hideous 

shapes. 
And trumpets all his falsehood to the 

world. 
Like other beetles he is fed on dung — 
He has eleven feet with which he crawls. 
Trailing a blistering slime, and this foul 

beast 
Has trackt lona from the Theban 

limits. 
From isle to isle, from city unto city, 
Urging her flight from the far Chersonese 
To fabulous Solyma, and the ^tnean 

Isle, 
Ortygia, Melite, and Calypso's Rock, 
And the swart tribes of Garamant and 

Fez, 

^ The Prometheus Round of ^schj'lus. 

2 And the Lord whistled for the gadfly out 
of Ethiopia, and for the bee of Egypt, etc. — 
Ezekiel. 



-^olia and Elysium, a"nd thy shores, 
Parthenope, which now, alas ! are free ! 
And thro' the fortunate Saturnian 

land, 
Into the darkness of the West. 

jMa/ni/iou. But if 

This Gadfly should drive lona hither? 
Purganax. Gods ! what an if ! but 
there is my gray Rat : 
So thin with want, he can crawl in and 

out 
Of any narrow chink and filthy hole, 
And he shall creep into her dressing- 
room, 
And — 

Mammon. My dear friend, where 
are your wits? as if 
She does not always toast a piece of 

cheese 
And bait the trap? and rats, when lean 

enough 
To crawl through such chinks — 

Piirga7iax. But my Leech — 

a leech 
Fit to suck blood, with lubricous round 

rings. 
Capaciously expatiative, which make 
His little body like a red balloon. 
As full of blood as that of hydrogen, 
Suckt from men's hearts; insatiably he 

sucks 
And clings and pulls — a horse-leech, 

whose deep maw 
The plethoric King Swellfoot could not 

fill. 
And who, till full, will cling for ever. 

JMatiimon. This 

For Queen lona might suffice, and less; 
But 't is the swinish multitude I fear. 
And in that fear I have — 

Purganax. Done what? 

Mammon. Disinherited 

My eldest son Chrysaor, because he 
Attended public meetings, and would al- 
ways 
Stand prating there of commerce, public 

faith. 
Economy, and unadulterate coin 
And other topics, ultra-radical; 
And have entailed my estate, called the 

Fool's Paradise, 
And funds in fairy-money, bonds, and 
bills. 



^ IVJ^LLt UU I I 'HE TYRA NT. 



399 



Upon my accomplished daughter Bank- 

notina, 
And married her to the Gallows. ^ 

Purganax, A good match ! 

Mavimon. A high connection, Pur- 
ganax. The bridegroom 
Is of a very ancient family, 
Of Hounslow Heath, Tyburn, and the 

New Drop, 
And has great influence in both Houses; 

— oh! 
He makes the fondest husband; nay, too 

fond, — 
New married people should not kiss in 

public; 
But the poor souls love one another so ! 
And then my little grandchildren, the 

Gibbets, 
Promising children as you ever saw, — 
The young playing at hanging, the elder 

learning 
How to hold radicals. They are well 

taught too. 
For every Gibbet says its catechism 
And reads a select chapter in the Bible 
Before it goes to play. 

\^A most tremendotis hnm)nijig is heard. 
Purganax, Ha! what do I hear? 

Enter the Gadfly. 

Alammon. Your Gadfly, as it seems' 
is tired of gadding. 

Gadfly. Hum ! hum ! hum ! 

From the lakes of the Alps, and the 
cold gray scalps 
Of the mountains, I come, 
Hum ! hum ! hum ! 
From Morocco and Fez, and the high 
palaces 
Of golden Byzantium; 
From the temples divine of old Palestine, 
From Athens and Rome, 
With a ha ! and a hum ! 
I come ! I come ! 
All inn-doors and windows 

Were open fo me; 
I saw all that sin does 
Which lamps hardly see 



1 " If one should marry a gallows, and beget 
young gibbets, I never saw one so prone." 

Cymbeline. 



That burn in the night by the curtained 

bed, — 
The impudent lamps ! for they blusht 
not red, 
Dinging and singing. 
From slumber I rung her. 
Loud as the clank of an iron- 
monger; 

Hum ! hum ! hum ! 

Far, far, far ! 
With the trump of my lips, and the sting 
at my hips, 
I drove her — afar ! 
Far, far, far ! 
From city to city, abandoned of pity, 
A ship without needle or star; — 
Homeless she past, like a cloud on the 
blast, 
Seeking peace, finding war; — 
She is here in her car. 
From afar, and afar; — 
Hum ! hum ! 

I have stung her and wrung her, 

The venom is working; — 
And if you had hung her 
With canting and quirking, 
She could not be deader than she will be 

soon; — 
I have driven her close to you, under 
the moon, 
Night and day, hum ! hum ! ha ! 
I have hummed her and drummed her 
From place to place, till at last I have 
dumbed her. 

Hum ! hum ! hum ! 

Enter the Leech and the Rat. 
Leech. I will suck 

Blood or muck ! 
The disease of the state is a ple- 

thory. 
Who so fit to reduce it as I? 

Rat. I'll slyly seize and 

Let blood from her weasand, — 
Creeping thro' crevice, and chink, and 

cranny. 
With my snakey tail, and my sides so 

scranny. 

Purganax . 
Aroint ye ! thou unprofitable worm 1 



400 



(ED I PUS TYR ANNUS; OR 



[ To the Leech. 

And thou, dull beetle, get thee back to 

hell! [ To the Gadjiy. 

To sting the ghosts of Babylonian kings, 

And the ox-headed lo. — 

S'vine (^ivitkin). 
Ugh, ugh, ugh ! 
Hail ! lona the divine, 
We will be no longer swine. 
But Bulls with horns and dewlaps. 
Rat. 

For, 
You know, my lord, the Minotaur — 
Piirganax (^ fiercely^. 

Be silent ! get to hell ! or I will call 
The cat out of the kitchen. Well, Lord 

Mammon, 
This is a pretty business. 

[ Exit the Rat. 
Alafnmon. 

I will go 
And spell some scheme to make it ugly 
then. — \_Exit. 

Enter SwELLFOOT. 
Swellfoot. She is returned ! Taurina 
is in Thebes 
When Swellfoot wishes that she were in 
hell ! 

Hymen, clothed in yellow jealousy. 
And waving o'er the couch of wedded 

kings 
The torch of Discord with its fiery hair; 
This is thy work, thou patron saint of 

queens ! 
Swellfoot is wived ! tho' parted by the 

sea. 
The very name of wife had conjugal 

rights; 
Her cursed image ate, drank, slept with 

me, 
And in the arms of Adiposa oft 
Her memory has received a husband's — 
[-•:/ loud titinult, and cries of " lona 

for ever ! — No Swellfoot ! ' ' 
Swellfoot. Hark ! 

How the swine cry lona Taurina; 

1 suffer the real presence; Purganax, 
Off with her head ! 

Purganax . But I must first 

impanel 
A jury of the Pigs. 



Srvellfoot. Pack them then. 

Purganax . Or fattening some few in 

two separate sties, 
And giving them clean straw, tying some 

bits 
Of ribbon round their legs — giving their 

Sows 
Some tawdry lace, and bits of lustre 

glass. 
And their young Boars white and red 

rags, and tails 
Of cows, and jay feathers, and sticking 

cauliflowers 
Between the ears of the old ones; and 

when 
They are persuaded, that by the inherent 

virtue 
Of these things, they are all imperial Pigs, 
Good Lord ! they 'd rip each other's 

bellies up. 
Not to say help us in destroying her. 
Swellfoot. This plan might be tried 

too; — where 's General 
Laoctonos ? 

Enter Laoctonos and Dakry. 

It is my royal pleasure 
That you, Lord General, bring the head 

and body. 
If separate it would please me better, 

hither 
Of Queen lona. 

Laoctonos. That pleasure I well 

knew. 
And made a charge with those battalions 

bold, 
Called, from their dress and grin, the 

royal Apes, 
Upon the Swine, who, in a hollow square 
Enclosed her, and received the first at- 
tack 
Like so many Rhinoceroses, and then 
Retreating in good order, with bare tusks 
And wrinkled snouts presented to the foe. 
Bore her in triumph to the public sty. 
What is still worse, some Sows upon the 

ground 
Have given the Ape-gjjards apples, nuts, 

and gin. 
And they all whisk their tails aloft, and 

cry, 
"Long live lona! down with Swell- 
foot! " 



Purganax, 



Hark! 



SWELLFOOT THE TYRANT. 



401 



The Swine {^zviihout^. Long live 

lona ! down with Swellfoot ! 
Dakry. I 

Went to the garret of the Swineherd's 

tower, 
Which overlooks the sty, and made a 

long 
Harangue (all words) to the assembled 

Swine, 
Of delicacy, mercy, judgment, law, 
Morals, and precedents, and purity, 
Adultery, destitution, and divorce, 
Piety, faith, and state necessity, 
And how I loved the Queen ! — and then 

I wept 
With the pathos of my own eloquence, 
And every tear turned to a mill-stone, 

which 
Brained many a gaping Pig, and there 

was made 
A slough of blood and brains upon the 

place. 
Greased with the pounded bacon; round 

and round 
The mill-stones rolled, ploughing the 

pavement up, 
And hurling sucking Pigs into the air, 
With dust and stones. — 

Entei' Mammon. 
Mammon. I wonder that 

gray wizards 
Like you should be so beardless in their 

schemes; 
It had been but a point of policy 
To keep lona and the Swine apart. 
Divide and rule ! but ye have made a 

junction 
Between two parties who will govern 

you 
But for my art. — Behold this BAG ! it 

is 
The poison BAG of that Green Spider 

huge, 
On which our spies skulked in ovation 

thro' 
The streets of Thebes, when they were 

paved with .dead: 
A bane so much the deadlier fills it 

now, 
As calumny is worse than death, — for 

here 
The Gadfly's venom, fifty times distilled, 
Is mingled with the vomit of the Leech, 



In due proportion, and black ratsbane, 

which 
That very Rat, who, like the Pontic tyrant, 
Nurtures himself on poison, dare not 

touch; — 
All is sealed up with the broad seal of 

Fraud, 
Who is the Devil's Lord High Chancellor, 
And over it the Primate of all Hell 
Murmured this pious baptism: — "Be 

thou called 
The GREEN BAG; and this power and 

grace be thine : 
That thy contents, on whomsoever 

poured. 
Turn innocence to guilt, and gentlest 

looks 
To savage, foul, and fierce deformity. 
Let all baptized by thy infernal dew 
Be called adulterer, drunkard, liar, 

wretch ! 
No name left out which orthodoxy loves, 
Court Journal or legitimate Review ! — 
Be they called tyrant, beast, fool, glut- 
ton, lover 
Of other wives and husbands than their 

own — 
The heaviest sin on this side of the Alps ! 
Wither they to a ghastly caricature 
Of what was human ! — let not man or 

beast 
Behold their face with unaverted eyes ! 
Or hear their names with ears that tingle 

not 
With blood of indignation, rage, and 

shame ! " — 
This is a perilous liquor; — good my 

Lords. — 

[Swellfoot approaches to touch the 
GREEN BAG. 

Beware! for God's sake, beware!- — if 
you should break 

The seal, and touch the fatal liquor — 
Ft^rganax. There, 

Give it to me. I have been used to 
handle 

All sorts of poisons. His dread Majesty 

Only desires to see the color of it. 

Mammon. Now, with a little com- 
mon sense, my Lords, 

Only undoing all that has been done 



402 



(ED IF us TYR ANNUS; OR 



(Yet so as it may seem we but confirm 

Our victory is assured. We must entice 
Her Majesty from the stye, and make 

the Pigs 
Believe that the contents of the GREEN 

BAG 
Are the true test of guilt or innocence. 
And that, if she be guilty, 't will trans- 
form her 
To manifest deformity like guilt. 
If innocent, she will become transfigured 
Into an angel, such as they say she is; 
And they will see her flying through the 

air, 
So bright that she will dim the noonday 

sun; 
Showering down blessings in the shape 

of comfits. 
This, trust a priest, is just the sort of 

thing 
Swine will believe. I '11 wager you will 

see them 
Climbing upon the thatch of their low 

sties, 
With pieces of smoked glass, to watch 

her sail 
Among the clouds, and some will hold 

the flaps 
Of one another's ears between their 

teeth. 
To catch the coming hail of comfits in. 
You, Purganax, who have the gift o' the 

gab, 
Make them a solemn speech to this ef- 
fect : 
I go to put in readiness the feast 
Kept to the honor of our goddess Fam- 
ine, 
Where, for more glory, let the cere- 
mony 
Take place of the uglification of the 
Queen. 
Dakry {fo S^vellfoot) . I, as the keeper 
of your sacred conscience. 
Humbly remind your Majesty that the 

care 
Of your high office, as man-milliner 
To red Bellona, should not be deferred. 
Purganax. All part in happier plight 
to meet again. \_Exeunt. 

END OF THE FIRST ACT. 



ACT II. 

SCENE I. — The Public Sty. 

The Boaj's iii full Assefnbly. 

Enter Purganax. 

Purganax. Grant me your patience, 
Gentlemen and Boars, 
Ye, by whose patience under public bur- 
dens 
The glorious constitution of these sties 
Subsists, and shall subsist. The lean-pig 

rates 
Grow with the growing populace of 

Swine, 
The taxes, that true source of piggishness 
(How can I find a more appropriate term 
To include religion, morals, peace, and 

plenty. 
And all that fit Boeotia as a nation 
To teach the other nations how to live?) 
Increase with piggishness itself; and still 
Does the revenue, that great spring of all 
The patronage, and pensions, and by- 
payments, 
Which free-born Pigs regard with jealous 

eyes, 
Diminish, till at length, by glorious steps. 
All the land's produce will be merged in 

taxes, 
And the revenue will amount to — noth- 
ing ! 
The failure of a foreign market for 
Sausages, bristles, and blood-puddings. 
And such home manufactures is but par- 
tial; 
And, that the population of the Pigs, 
Instead of hog-wash, has been fed on 

straw 
And water, is a fact which is — you 

know — 
That is — it is a state-necessity — 
Temporary, of course. Those impious 

Pigs, 
Who, by frequent squeaks, have dared 

impugn 
The settled Swellfoot system, or to make 
Irreverent mockery of the genuflexions 
Inculcated by the arch-priest, have been 
whipt 



SWELLFOOT THE TYRANT. 



403 



Into a loyal and an orthodox whine. 
Things being in this happy state, the 

Queen 
lona — 

(^ loud cry frojH //^fPiGS.) She is in- 
nocent ! most innocent ! 
Purganax. That is the very thing 
that I was saying, 
Gentlemen Swine; the Queen lona being 
Most innocent, no doubt, returns to 

Thebes, 
And the lean Sows and Boars collect 

about her, 
Wishing to make her think that WE be- 
lieve 
(I mean those more substantial Pigs, who 

swill 
Rich hog-wash, while the others mouth 

damp straw) 
That she is guilty; thus, the Lean-Pig 

faction 
Seeks to obtain that hog-wash, which has 

been 
Your immemorial right, and which I 

will 
Maintain you in to the last drop of — 

A Boar (^interrupting him). What 
Does any one accuse her of? 

Purganax. Why, no one 

Makes any positive accusation; — but_ 
There were hints dropt, and so the privy 

wizards 

Conceived that it became them to advise 

His Majesty to investigate their truth; — 

I Not for his own sake; he could be con- 

I tent 

To let his wife play any pranks she 

pleased. 
If, by that sufferance, //^ could please the 

Pigs ; 
But then he fears the morals of the Swine, 
The Sows especially, and what effect 
It might produce upon the purity and 
Religion of the rising generation 
Of sucking Pigs, if it could be suspected 
That Queen lona — [ -^ pause. 

First Boar. Well, go on; we long 
To hear what she can possibly have 
done. 
Purganax. Why, it is hinted, that a 
certain Bull — 
Thus much is hto-vn : — the milk-white 
Bulls that feed 



Beside Clitumnus and the crystal lakes 
Of the Cisalpine mountains, in fresh 

dews 
Of lotus-grass and blossoming asphodel. 
Sleeking their silken hair, and with sweet 

breath 
Loading the morning winds until they 

faint 
With living fragrance, are so beautiful ! — 
Well, /say nothing; — but Europa rode 
On such a one from Asia into Crete, 
And the enamoured sea grew calm beneath 
His gliding beauty. And Pasiphae, 
lona's grandmother, — but ihe is inno- 
cent ! 
And that both you and I, and all assert. 
First Boar.. Most innocent ! 
Purganax. Behold this 

BAG; a Bag — 
Second Boar. Oh! no GREEN 

BAGS ! ! Jealousy's eyes are 
green. 
Scorpions are green, and water-snakes, 

and efts. 
And verdigris, and — 

Purganax. Honorable Swine, 

In piggish souls can prepossessions reign? 
Allow me to remind you, grass is green — 
All flesh is grass; — no bacon but is 

flesh — 
Ye are but bacon. This divining BAG 
(Which is not green, but only bacon 

color) 
Is filled with liquor, which if sprinkled 

o'er 
A woman guilty of — we all know what — 
Makes her so hideous, till she finds one 

blind 
She never can commit the like again. 
If innocent, she will turn into an angel, 
And rain down blessings in the shape of 

comfits 
As she flies up to heaven. Now, my pro- 
posal 
Is to convert her sacred Majesty 
Into an angel (as I am sure we shall do), 
By pouring on her ^head this mystic 
water. 

[Showing the Bag. 

I know that she is innocent; I wish 
Only to prove her so to all the world. 
First Boar. Excellent, just, and 

noble Purganax. 



404 



CEDIPUS TYR ANNUS; OR 



Second Boar. How glorious it will 

be to see her Majesty 
Flying above our heads, her petticoats 
Streaming like — like — like — 
Third Boar. Any thing. 

Piirganax. Oh, no ! 

But like a standard of an admiral's ship. 
Or like the banner of a conquering host, 
Or like a cloud dyed in the dying day. 
Unravelled on the blast from a white 

mountain; 
Or like a meteor, or a war-steed's mane, 
Or waterfall from a dizzy precipice 
Scattered upon the wind. 

First Boar. Or a cow's tail. 

Second Boar. Or any thing, as the 

learned Boar observed. 
Purganax. Gentlemen Boars, I move 
a resolution, 
That her most sacred Majesty should be 
Invited to attend the feast of Famine, 
And to receive upon her chaste white 

body 
Dews of Apotheosis from this BAG. 

{^ A great confusion is heard of the Pigs 
OUT OF Doors, ivhich coninmnicates 
itself to those 7vithin. During the first 
Strophe, the doors of the Stye are staved 
in, and a number of exceedingly lean 
Pigs ««^/Sows and^OK^.^ rush in. 

Seniichorus /. 
No! Yes! 

Seniichorus II. 
Yes! No! 

Seniichorus I. 
A law! 

Seniichorus II. 
A flaw ! 

Seniichorus I. 
Porkers, we shall lose our wash. 

Or must share it with the Lean-Pigs ! 

First Boar. 
Order ! order ! be not rash ! 

Was there ever such a scene, Pigs ! 

An old Sow (^rushing in'). 
I never saw so fine a dash 

Since I first began to wean Pigs. 

Second Boar {solenuily). 
The Queen will be an angel time enough. 



I vote, in form of an amendment, thatj 
Purganax rub a little of that stuff i 

Upon his face. 

Purganax {His heart is seen to beat 
through his zvaistcoat). 

Gods ! What would ye be at? 

Seniichorus I. 
Purganax has plainly shown a 

Cloven foot and jack-daw feather. 

Seniichorus II. 
I vote Swellfoot and lona 

Try the magic test together; 
Whenever royal spouses bicker, 
Both should try the magic liquor. 

An old Boar {aside). 
A miserable state is that of Pigs, 
For if their drivers would tear caps 
and wigs, 
The Swine must bite each other's ear 
therefore. 

A 71 old So7v {aside). 
A wretched lot Jove has assigned to 

Swine, 
Squabbling makes Pig-herds hungry, 
and they dine 
On bacon, and whip sucking-Pigs the 
more. 

Chorus. 
Hog-wash has been ta'en away: 
If the Bull-Queen is divested. 
We shall be in every way 

Hunted, stript, exposed, molested; 
Let us do whate'er we may, 
That she shall not be arrested. 
Queen, we entrench you with walls of 
brawn, 
And palisades of tusks, sharp as a 
bayonet : 
Place your most sacred person here. 
We pawn 
Our lives that none a finger dare to 
lay on it. 
Those who wrong you, wrong us; 
Those who hate you, hate us; 
Those who sting you, sting us; 
Those who bait you, bait us; i 

The oracle is now about to be 
Fulfilled by circumvolving destiny; . 

Which says: "Thebes, choose reform ' 
or civil wary I 



SWELLFOOT THE TYRANT. 



405 



When through your streets, instead of 

hare with dogs, 
A Consort Queen shall hunt a King 
with hogs. 
Riding upon the IONIAN MINO- 
TAUR." 
Entei- Iona Taurina. 
Ion a Taiirma (^comijig foi'7uard). 
Gentlemen Swine, and gentle Lady- 
Pigs, 
The tender heart of every Boar acquits 
Their Queen, of any act incongruous 
With native piggishness, and she reposing 
With confidence upon the grunting nation. 
Has thrown herself, her cause, her life, 

her all. 
Her innocence, into their hoggish arms; 
Nor has the expectation been deceived 
Of finding shelter there. Yet know, 

great Boars 
(For such who ever lives among you 

finds you. 
And so do I), the innocent are proud ! 
I have accepted your protection only 
In compliment of your kind love and care. 
Not for necessity. The innocent 
Are safest there where trials and dangers 

wait; 
Innocent Queens o'er white-hot plough- 
shares tread 
Unsinged, and ladies, Erin's laureate 

sings it,i 
Deckt with rare gems, and beauty rarer 

still, 
Walkt from Killarney to the Giant's 

Causeway, 
Thro' rebels, smugglers, troops of 

yeomanry, 
White-boys, and Orange-boys, and con- 
stables. 
Tithe-proctors, and excise people, unin- 
jured ! 
Thus I ! — 

Lord Purganax, I do commit myself 
Into your custody, and am prepared 
To stand the test, whatever it may be ! 
Purganax. This magnanimity in 

your sacred Majesty 
Must please the Pigs. You cannot fail 
of being 

! * " Rich and rare were the genw she wore." 
See Moore's " Irish Melodies." 



A heavenly angel. Smoke your bits of 

glass, 
Ye loyal Swine, or her transfiguration 
Will blind your wondering eyes. 

An old Boar (aside^. Take care, 

my Lord, 
They do not smoke you first. 

Purganax. At the approach- 

ing feast 
Of Famine, let the expiation be. 
Szoine. Content ! content ! 
lojia Taurina (^aside). I, most 

content of all. 
Know that my foes even thus prepare 
their fall ! \_Exeunt armies . 



SCENE II. — The interior of the Tem- 
ple of Famine. The statue of the 
Goddess^ a skeleton clothed in party- 
colored rags, seated upon a heap of skulls 
and loaves intermingled. A number oj 
exceedingly fat Priests in black garments 
arrayed on each side, with ?narrotu-bones 
and cleavers in their hands, A flourish 
of trumpets. 

Enter Mammon as arch-priest, Swell- 
FOOT, Dakry, Purganax, Lao- 

CTONOS, followed by lONA TaURINA 
guarded. On the other side enter the 
SwiNE. 

Chorus of Priests, accompanied by 
the Court Porkman on marrow- 
bones and cleavers. 

Goddess bare, and gaunt, and pale, 
Empress of the world, all hail ! 
What tho' Cretans old called thee 
City-crested Cybele? 
We call thee Famine ! 
Goddess of fasts and feasts, starving and 

cramming ! 
Thro' thee, for emperors, kings, and 

priests and lords. 
Who rule by viziers, sceptres, banknotes, 
words. 
The earth pours forth its plenteous 

fruits. 
Corn, wool, linen, flesh, and roots — 
Those who consume these fruits thro' thee 
grow fat. 
Those who produce these fruits thro' 
thee grow lean, 



400 



(ED IF US TYR ANNUS; OR 



Whatever change takes place, oh, stick 
to that! 
And let things be as they have ever 
been; 
At least while we remain thy priests, 
And proclaim thy fasts and feasts ! 
Thro' thee the sacred Swellfoot 

dynasty 
Is based upon a rock amid that sea 
Whose waves are Swine — so let it ever 
be! 

[Swellfoot, etc., seat themselves at a 
table magnificently covered at the upper 
end of the temple. Attendants pass 
over the stage ivith hog-wash in pails. 
A munber of Pigs, exceedingly lean, 
follow them licking up the wash. 

Mammon. I fear your sacred Majesty 
has lost 

The appetite which you were used to 
have. 

Allow me now to recommend this dish — 

A simple kickshaw by your Persian cook, 

Such as is served at the great King's 
second table. 

The price and pains which its ingredients 
cost. 

Might have maintained some dozen fami- 
lies 

A winter or two — not more — so plain 
a dish 

Could scarcely disagree. 

Swellfoot. After the trial. 

And these fastidious Pigs are gone, per- 
haps 

I may recover my lost appetite, — 

I feel the gout flying about my stomach — 

Give me a glass of Maraschino punch. 
Purganax (filling his glass, and stand- 
ing up). The glorious constitu- 
tion of the Pigs ! 
All. A toast ! a toast ! stand up and 

three times three ! 
Dakry. No heel-taps — darken day- 
lights ! — 
Laoctonos. Claret, somehow. 

Puts me in mind of blood, and blood of 
claret ! 
Swellfoot. Laoctonos is fishing for a 
compliment, 

But 't is his due. Yes, you have drunk 
more wine. 



And shed more blood than any man in 
Thebes. 

[ To Purganax. 
For God's sake stop the grunting of those 
Pigs ! 
Purganax. We dare not. Sire 't is 
Famine's privilege. 

Chorus of Swine. 
Hail to thee, hail to thee, Famine ! 
Thy throne is on blood, and thy robe 
is of rags; 
Thou devil which livest on damning; 
Saint of new churches, and cant, 
and GREEN BAGS, 
Till in pity and terror thou risest. 
Confounding the schemes of the wisest, 
When thou liftest thy skeleton form, 
When the loaves and the skulls roll 
about, 
We will greet thee — the voice of a 
storm 
Would be lost in our terrible shout ! 

Then hail to thee, hail to thee, Famine ! 

Hail to thee, Empress of Earth ! 
When thou risest, dividing possessions; 
When thou risest, uprooting oppres- 
sions; 
In the pride of thy ghastly mirth. 
Over palaces, temples, and graves. 
We will rush as thy minister-slaves, 
Trampling behind in thy train. 
Till all be made level again ! 
Mammon. I hear a crackling of the 
giant bones 
Of the dread image, and in the black pits 
Which once were eyes, I see two livid 

flames. 
These prodigies are oracular, and show 
The presence of the unseen Deity. 
Mighty events are hastening to their 
doom ! 
Szvellfoot. I only hear the lean and 
mutinous Swine 
Grunting about the temple. 

Dakry. In a crisis 

Of such exceeding delicacy, I think 
We ought to put her Majesty, the Queen, 
Upon her trial without delay. 

Mammon. THE BAG 

Is here. 

Purganax . I have rehearsed 

the entire scene 



SWELLFOOT THE TYRANT. 



407 



With an ox bladder and some ditch- 
water, 

On Lady P. — it cannot fail. (Taking 
up the bag.) Your Majesty 

[ 7'c SWELLFOOT. 

In such a filthy business had better 
Stand on one side, lest it should sprinkle 

you, 
A spot or two on me would do no harm, 
Nay, it might hide the blood, which the 

sad genius 
Of the Green Isle has fixt, as by a spell. 
Upon my brow — which would stain all 

its seas. 
But which those seas could never wash 
away ! 
lona Taiirina. My Lord, I am ready 
— nay, I am impatient 
To undergo the test. 
\^A graceful figure ui a semi-transpar- 
ent veil passes unnoticed through the 
Te?nple ; the ivord LIBERTY is see7i 
through the veil, as if it tvere turitten 
in fire upon its forehead. Its words 
are almost drowned in the furious 
grunting of the Pigs, a^id the business 
of the trial. She kneels on the steps of 
the Altar, and speaks in tones at first 
faint and low, but which ever become 
louder and louder. 

Mighty Empress ! Death's white wife ! 
Ghastly mother-in-law of life ! 
By the God who made thee such, 
By the magic of thy touch. 
By the starving and the cramming, 
Of fasts and feasts ! by thy dread self, 

O Famine ! 
I charge thee ! when thou wake the mul- 
titude 
Thou lead them not upon the paths of 

blood. 
The earth did never mean her foison 
For those who crown life's cup with 

poison 
Of fanatic rage and meaningless re- 
venge — 
But for those radiant spirits, who are 
still 
The standard-bearers in the van of 
Change. 
Be they th' appointed stewards, to fill 
The lap of Pain, and Toil, and Age ! — 
Remit, O Queen ! thy accustomed rage ! 



Be what thou art not ! In voice faint 

and low 
Freedom calls Eamitie, — her eternal foe. 
To brief alliance, hollow truce. — Rise 

now ! 
[ Whilst the Veiled Figure has been chant- 
ing this strophe. Mammon, Dakry, 
Laoctonos, and Swellfoot, have 
surrouftded loNA Taurina, zvho, 
with her hands folded on her breast, 
and her eyes lifted to Heaven, stands, 
as with saint-like resignation, to wait 
the isstie of the business, in perfect con- 
fidence of her innocence. 
[Purganax, after unsealing the GREEN 
BAG, is gravely about to pour the 
liquor upon her head, when suddenly 
the whole expression of her figure and 
countenance changes; she snatches it 
fro?n his hand tvith a loud laugh of 
tritanph, and empties it over Swell- 
foot and his whole Court, who are 
instantly changed into a number of 
filthy and ugly animals, and rush out 
of the Temple. The image <?/" Famine 
then arises ivith a tremendous sound, 
the Pigs begin scrambling for the 
loaves, and are tripped up by the 
skulls ; all those who eat the loaves are 
turned into Bulls, and arrange them- 
selves quietly behind the altar. The 
image of FAMINE sinks through a 
chasm in the earth, and a MiNOTAUR 
rises. 

Minotaur. I am the Ionian Minotaur, 
the mightiest 
Of all Europa's taurine progeny — 
I am the old traditional Man-Bull; 
And from my ancestors having been 

Ionian, 
I am called Ion, which, by interpretation. 
Is John; in plain Theban, that is to say, 
My name's John Bull; I am a famous 

hunter. 
And can leap any gate in all Boeotia, 
Even the palings of the royal park, 
Or double ditch about the new enclo-' 

sures; 
And if your Majesty will deign to mount 

me. 
At least till you have hunted down your 

game, 
I will not throw you. 



4o8 



NOTE ON (ED IP US TV R ANNUS. 



lona Taurina. (^Durhig this speech 
she has been putting on boots and 
spurs, and a hunting cap, buck- 
ishly cocked on one side, attd 
tucking up her hair, she leaps 
nimbly on his back.') Hoa ! hoa ! 
tallyho ! tallyho ! ho ! ho ! 

Come, let us hunt these ugly badgers 
down, 

These stinking foxes, these devouring 
otters, 

These hares, these wolves, these any- 
thing but men. 

Hey, for a whipper-in ! my loyal Pigs, 

Now let your noses be as keen as beagles. 

Your steps as swift as greyhounds, and 
your cries 

More dulcet and symphonious than the 
bells 

Of village-towers, on sunshine holiday; 

Wake all the dewy woods with jangling 
music. 

Give them no law (are they not beasts 
of blood?) 

But such as they gave you. Tallyho ! 
ho! 

Thro' forest, furze, and bog, and den, and 
desert. 

Pursue the ugly beasts ! tallyho ! ho ! 
Full Chorus of Ion A and the SwiNE. 

Tallyho ! tallyho ! 
Thro' rain, hail, and snow. 
Thro' brake, gorse, and briar, 
Thro' fen, flood, and mire. 
We go ! we go ! 

Tallyho ! tallyho ! 
Thro' pond, ditch, and slough. 
Wind them, and find them, 
Like the Devil behind them, 

Tallyho ! tallyho ! 
S^Exeunt, in full cry ; lONA driving 
on the Swine, with the ejnpty 
Green Bag. 

THE END 



NOTE ON CEDIPUS TYRANNUS, 
BY MRS. SHELLEY. 

In the brief journal I kept in those 
days, I find recorded, in August 1820, 



Shelley *' begins ' Swellfoot the Tyrant,' 
suggested by the pigs at the fair of San 
Giuliano. ' ' This was the period of Queen 
Caroline's landing in England, and the 
struggles made by George IV. to get rid 
of her claims; which failing. Lord Castle- 
reagh placed the " Green Bag'''' on the 
table of the House of Commons, demand- 
ing in the King's name that an inquiry 
should be instituted into his wife's con- 
duct. These circumstances were the 
theme o.f all conversation among the 
English. We were then at the Baths of 
San Giuliano. A friend came to visit us 
on the day when a fair was held in the 
square beneath our windows : Shelley 
read to us his ' ' Ode to Liberty ; ' ' and was 
riotously accompanied by the grunting of 
a quantity of pigs brought for sale to the 
fair. He compared it to the " chorus of 
frogs " in the satiric drama of Aristopha- 
nes; and, it being an hour of merriment, 
and one ludicrous association suggesting 
another, he imagined a political-satirical 
drama on the circumstances of the day, 
to which the pigs would serve as chorus 
— and "Swellfoot" was begun. When 
finished, it was transmitted to England, 
printed, and published anonymously; 
but stifled at the very dawn of its exist- 
ence by the Society for the Suppression 
of Vice, who threatened to prosecute it, 
if not immediately withdrawn. The 
friend who had taken the trouble of bring- 
ing it out, of course, did not think it 
worth the annoyance and expense of a 
contest, and it was laid aside. 

Hesitation of whether it would do 
honor to Shelley prevented my publish- 
ing it at first. But I cannot bring myself 
to keep back anything he ever wrote; for 
each word is fraught with the peculiar 
views and sentiments which he believed 
to be beneficial to the human race, and 
the bright light of poetry irradiates every 
thought. The world has a right to the 
entire compositions of such a man; for it 
does not live and thrive by the outworn 
lesson of the dullard or the hypocrite, 
but by the original free thoughts of men 
of genius, who aspire to pluck bright 
truth 



EPIPS YCHTDTON. 



4C9 



" from the pale-faced moon; 
Or dive into the bottom of the deep 
Where fathom-line could never touch the ground, 
And pluck up drowned " 

truth. Even those who may dissent 
from his opinions will consider that he 
was a man of genius, and that the world 
will take more interest in his slightest 
word than from the waters of Lethe 
which are so eagerly prescribed as medi- 
cinal for all its wrongs and woes. This 
drama, however, must not be judged for 
more than was meant. It is a mere play- 
thing of the imagination; which even 
may not excite smiles among many, who 
will not see wit in those combinations of 
thought which were full of the ridiculous 
to the author. But, like everything he 
wrote, it breathes that deep sympathy 
for the sorrows of humanity, and indig- 
nation against its oppressors, which make 
it worthy of his name. 



EPIPSVCHIDION. 



VERSES ADDRESSED TO THE NOBLE 
AND UNFORTUNATE LADY, EMILIA 
V , 



NOW IMPRISONED IN THE CON- 
VENT OF 



L'anima amante si slancia fuori del creato, e 
si crea nel infinito un Mondo tutto per essa, 
diverso assai da questo oscuro e pauroso baratro. 
Her own words. 



My Song, I fear that thou wilt find 

but few 
Who fitly shall conceive thy reasoning. 
Of such hard matter dost thou entertain; 
Whence, if by misadventure, chance 

should bring 
Thee to base company (as chance may 

do), 
Quite unaware of what thou dost contain, 
I prithee, comfort thy sweet self again. 

My last delight ! tell them that they are 

dull. 
And bid them own that thou art beautiful. 



ADVERTISEMENT. 

The Writer of the following Lines 
died at Florence, as he was preparing for 
a voyage to one of the wildest of the 
Sporades, which he had bought, and 
where he had fitted up the ruins of an 
old building, and where it was his hope 
to have realized a scheme of life, suited 
perhaps to that happier and better world 
of which he is now an inhabitant, but 
hardly practicable in this. His life was 
singular; less on account of the romantic 
vicissitudes which diversified it, than the 
ideal tinge which it received from his 
own character and feelings. The present 
Poem, like the Vita Nuova cf Dante, is 
sufficiently intelligible to a certain class 
of readers without a matter-of-fact his- 
tory of the circumstances to which it re- 
lates; and to a certain other class it must 
ever remain incomprehensible, from a 
defect of a common organ of perception 
for the ideas of which it treats. Not but 
that, gran vergogna sarebbe a colui, che 
riniasse cosa sotto veste di Jigtcra, o di 
colore rettorico : e domandato non sa- 
pesse deniidare le sue parole da cotal 
veste, in guisa che avessero verace inten- 
dimento. 

The present poem appears to have 
been intended by the Writer as the dedi- 
cation to some longer one. The stanza 
on the opposite page is almost a literal 
translation from Dante's famous Canzone 

Voi, ch^ intendendo, il terzo del tiiovete, etc. 

The presumptuous application of the 
concluding lines to his own composition 
will raise a smile at the expense of my 
unfortunate friend; be it a smile not of 
contempt, but pity. S. 

EPIPSVCHIDION. 

Sweet Spirit ! Sister of that orphan 

one. 
Whose empire is the name thou weepest 

on. 
In my heart's temple I suspend to thee 
These votive wreaths of withered 

memory. 



410 



EPIPS YC HID ION. 



Poor captive bird! who, from thy 
narrow cage, 

Pourest such music, that it might assuage 

The rugged hearts of those who prisoned 
thee, 

Were they not deaf to all sweet melody; 

This song shall be thy rose: its petals 
pale 

Are dead, indeed, my adored Nightin- 
gale ! 

But soft and fragrant is the faded 
blossom, 

And it has no thorn left to wound thy 
bosom. 

High, spirit-winged Heart ! who dost 

forever 
Beat thine unfeeling bars with vain en- 
deavor. 
Till those bright plumes of thought, in 

which arrayed 
It over-soared this low and worldly 

shade. 
Lie shattered; and thy panting, wounded 

breast 
Stains with dear blood its unmaternal 

nest ! 
I weep vain tears: blood would less 

bitter be. 
Yet poured forth gladlier, could it profit 

thee. 

Seraph of Heaven! too gentle to be 

human, 
Veiling beneath that radiant form of 

Woman 
All that is insupportable in thee 
Of light, and love, and immortality ! 
Sweet Benediction in the eternal Curse ! 
Veiled Glory of this lampless Universe ! 
Thou Moon beyond the clouds ! Thou 

living Form 
Among the Dead ! Thou Star above the 

Storm ! 
Thou Wonder, and thou Beauty, and 

thou Terror ! 
Thou Harmony of Nature's art ! Thou 

Mirror 
In whom, as in the splendor of the Sun, 
All shapes look glorious which thou 

gazest on 1 
Ay, even the dim words which obscure 

thee now 



Flash, lightning-like, with unaccustomed 

glow ; 
I pray thee that thou blot from this sad 

song 
All of its much mortality and wrong, 
With those* clear drops, which start like 

sacred dew 
From the twin lights thy sweet soul 

darkens thro'. 
Weeping, till sorrow becomes ecstasy :_ 
Then smile on it, so that it may not die. 

I never thought before my death to 

see 
Youth's vision thus made perfect. Emily, 
I love thee; tho' the world by no thin 

name 
Will hide that love, from its unvalued 

shame. 
Would we two had been twins of the 

same mother ! 
Or, that the name my heart lent to 

another 
Could be a sister's bond for her and 

thee. 
Blending two beams of one eternity ! 
Yet were one lawful and the other true. 
These names, tho' dear, could paint not, 

as is due, 
How beyond refuge I am thine. Ah me ! 
I am not thine : I am a part of thee. 

Sweet Lamp ! my moth-like Muse has 

burnt its wings; 
Or, like a dying swan who soars and 

sings. 
Young Love should teach Time, in his 

own gray style, 
All that thou art. Art thou not void of 

guile, 
A lovely soul formed to be blest and 

bless? 
A well of sealed and secret happiness, 
Whose waters like blithe light and music 

are. 
Vanquishing dissonance and gloom ? A 

Star 
Which moves not in the moving Heavens, 

alone? 
A smile amid dark frowns? a gentle 

tone 
Amid rude voices? a beloved light? 
A Solitude, a Refuge, a Delight? 



EPIPS YC HID ION. 



411 



A Lute, which those whom Love has 

taught to play 
Make music on, to soothe the roughest 

day 
And lull fond grief asleep? a buried 

treasure? 
A cradle of young thoughts of wingless 

pleasure ; 
A violet-shrouded grave of Woe? — I 

measure 
The world of fancies, seeking one like 

thee, 
An-d find — alas ! mine own infirmity. 

She met me, Stranger, upon life's 
rough way, 

And lured me towards sweet Death; as 
Night by Day, 

Winter by Spring, or Sorrow by swift 
Hope, 

Led into light, life, peace. An ante- 
lope. 

In the suspended impulse of its light- 
ness, 

Were less ethereally light : the brightness 

Of her divinest presence trembles thro' 

Her limbs, as underneath a cloud of dew 

Embodied in the windless Heaven of 
June 

Amid the splendor-winged stars, the 
Moon 

Burns, inextinguishably beautiful : 

And from her lips, as from a hyacinth 
full 

Of honey-dew, a liquid murmur drops. 

Killing the sense with passion; sweet as 
stops 

Of planetary music heard in trance. 

In her mild lights the starry spirits 
dance. 

The sunbeams of those wells which ever 
leap 

Under the lightnings of the soul — too 
deep 

For the brief fathom-line of thought or 
sense. 

The glory of her being, issuing thence, 

Stains the dead, blank, cold air with a 
warm shade 

Of unentangled intermixture, made 

By Love, of light and motion : one in- 
tense 

Diffusion, one serene Omnipresence, 



Whose flowing outlines mingle in their 
flowing 

Around her cheeks and utmost fingers 
glowing 

With the unintermitted blood, which 
there 

Quivers (as in a fleece of snow-like air 

The crimson pulse of living morning 
quiver), 

Continuously prolonged, and ending 
never, 

Till they are lost, and in that Beauty 
furled 

Which penetrates and clasps and fills the 
world; 

Scarce visible from extreme loveliness. 

Warm fragrance seems to fall from her 
light dress 

And her loose hair; and where some 
heavy tress 

The air of her own speed has disentwined. 

The sweetness seems to satiate the faint 
wind; 

And in the soul a wild odor is felt, 

Beyond the sense, like fiery dews that melt 

Into the bosom of a frozen bud. — 

See where she stands ! a mortal shape in- 
dued 

With love and life and light and deity, 

And motion which may change but can 
not die; 

An image of some bright Eternity; 

A shadow of some golden dream; a Splen- 
dor 

Leaving the third sphere pilotless; a ten- 
der 

Reflection of the eternal Moon of Love 

Under whose motions life's dull billows 
move ; 

A Metaphor of Spring and Youth and 
Morning; 

A Vision like incarnate April, warning. 

With smiles and tears. Frost the Anatomy 

Into his summer grave. 

Ah, woe is me ! 
What have I dared? where am I lifted? 

how 
Shall I descend, and perish not ? I know 
That Love makes all things equal : I have 

heard 
By mine own heart this joyous truth 

averred : 



412 



EPIPS YC HI DION. 



The spirit of the worm beneath the sod 
In love and worship blends itself with 
God. 

Spouse ! Sister ! Angel ! Pilot of the 

Fate 
Whose course has been so starless ! Oh, 

too late 
Beloved ! Oh, too soon adored, by me ! 
For in the fields of immortality 
My spirit should at first have worshipt 

thine, 
A divine presence in a place divine; 
Or should have moved beside it on this 

earth, 
A shadow of that substance, from its 

birth : 
But not as now: — I love thee; yes, I 

feel 
That on the fountain of my heart a seal 
Is set, to keep its waters pure and bright 
For thee, since in those tears thou hast 

delight. 
We — are we not formed, as notes of mu- 
sic are. 
For one another, tho' dissimilar; 
Such difference without discord, as can 

make 
Those sweetest sounds, in which all spirits 

shake 
As trembling leaves in a continuous air? 

Thy wisdom speaks in me, and bids me 

dare 
Beacon the rocks on which high hearts 

are wreckt. 
I never was attached to that great sect. 
Whose doctrine is, that each one should 

select 
Out of the crowd a mistress or a friend. 
And all the rest, tho' fair and wise, 

commend 
To cold oblivion, tho' it is in the code 
Of modern morals, and the beaten road 
Which those poor slaves with weary foot- 
step tread, 
Who travel to their home among the dead 
By the broad highway of the world, and 

so 
With one chained friend, perhaps a jealous 

foe, 
The dreariest and the longest journey 

go- 



True Love in this differs from gold and 

clay. 
That to divide is not to take away. 
Love is like understanding, that grows 

bright. 
Gazing on many truths; 't is like thy 

Imagination ! which from earth and sky. 
And from the depths of human fantasy. 
As from a thousand prisms and mirrors, 

fills 
The Universe with glorious beams, and 

kills 
Error, the worm, with many a sunlike 

arrow 
Of its reverberated lightning. Narrow 
The heart that loves, the brain that con- 
templates. 
The life that wears, the spirit that creates 
One object, and one form, and builds 

thereby 
A sepulchre for its eternity. 

Mind from its object differs most in 

this: 
Evil from good: misery from happiness; 
The baser from the nobler; the impure 
And frail, from what is clear and must 

endure. 
If you divide suffering and dross, you may 
Diminish till it is consumed away; 
If you divide pleasure and love and 

thought. 
Each part exceeds the whole; and we 

know not 
How much, while any yet remains un- 
shared. 
Of pleasure may be gained, of sorrow 

spared : 
This truth is that deep well, whence sages 

draw 
The unenvied light of hope; the eternal 

law 
By which those live, to whom this world 

of life 
Is as a garden ravaged, and whose strife 
Tills for the promise of a later birth 
The wilderness of this Elysian earth. 

There was a Being whom my spirit oft 
Met on its visioned wanderings, far aloft, 
In the clear golden prime of my youth's 

dawn, 
Upon the fairy isles of sunny lawn, 



EPIPS YC HID ION. 



413 



Amid the enchanted mountains, and the 

caves 
Of divine sleep, and on the air-like waves 
Of wonder-level dream, whose tremulous 

floor 
Paved her light steps; — on an imagined 

shore, 
Under the gray beak of some promontory 
She met me, robed in such exceeding 

glory* 
That I beheld her not. In solitudes 

Her voice came to me thro' the whis- 
pering woods, 
And from the fountains, and the odors 

deep 
Of flowers, which, like lips murmuring 

in their sleep 
Of the sweet kisses which had lulled 

them there. 
Breathed but of her to the enamoured air; 
And from the breezes whether low or 

loud, 
And from the rain of every passing cloud, 
And from the singing of the summer 

birds, 
And from all sounds, all silence. In the 

words 
Of antique verse and high romance, — 

in form, 
Sound, color — in whatever checks that 

Storm 
Which with the shattered present chokes 

the past; 
And in that best philosophy, whose taste 
Makes this cold common hell, our life, a 

doom 
As glorious as a fiery martyrdom; 
Her Spirit was the harmony of truth. — 

Then, from the caverns of my dreamy 

youth 
I sprang, as one sandalled with plumes of 

fire. 
And towards the loadstar of my one 

desire, 
I flitted, like a dizzy moth, whose flight 
Is as a dead leaf's in the owlet light. 
When it would seek in Hesper's setting 

sphere 
A radiant death, a fiery sepulchre, 
As if it were a lamp of earthly flame. — 
But She, whom prayers or tears then 

could not tame, 



Past, like a God throned on a winged 

planet. 
Whose burning plumes to tenfold swift- 
ness fan it, 
Into the dreary cone of our life's shade; 
And as a man with mighty loss dis- 
mayed, 
I would have followed, tho' the grave 

between 
Yawned like a gulf whose spectres are 

unseen : 
When a voice said : — " O Thou of hearts 

the weakest, 
The phantom is beside thee whom thou 

seekest." 
Then I — "Where?" the world's echo 

answered "where ! " 
And in that silence, and in my despair, 
I questioned every tongueless wind that 

flew 
Over my tower of mourning, if it knew 
Whither 't was fled, this soul out of my 

soul; 
And murmured names and spells which 

have control 
Over the sightless tyrants of our fate; 
But neither prayer nor verse could dissi- 
pate 
The night which closed on her; nor 

uncreate 
That world within this Chaos, mine and 

me, 
Of which she was the veiled Divinity, 
The world I say of thoughts that wor- 

shipt her: 
And therefore I went forth, with hope 

and fear 
And every gentle passion sick to death, 
Feeding my course with expectation's 

breath. 
Into the wintry forest of our life; 
And struggling thro' its error with vain 

strife. 
And stumbling in my weakness and my 

haste. 
And half bewildered by new forms, I 

past 
Seeking among those untaught foresters 
If I could find one form resembling hers, 
In which she might have maskt herself 

from me. 
There, — One, whose voice was venomed 

melody 



414 



EPIPS YC HI DION. 



Sate by a well, under blue nightshade 
bowers; 

The breath of her false mouth was like 
faint flowers, 

Her touch was as electric poison, — flame 

Out of her looks into my vitals came, 

And from her living cheeks and bosom 
flew 

A killing air, which pierced like honey- 
dew 

Into the core of my green heart, and lay 

Upon its leaves; until, as hair grown 
gray 

O'er a young brow, they hid its unblown 
prime 

With ruins of unseasonable time. 

In many mortal forms I rashly sought 
The shadow of that idol of my thought. 
And some were fair — but beauty dies 

away: 
Others were wise — but honeyed words 

betray : 
And One was true — oh ! why not true to 

me? 
Then, as a hunted deer that could not 

flee, 
I turned upon my thoughts, and stood at 

bay. 
Wounded and weak and panting; the 

cold day 
Trembled, for pity of my strife and pain. 
When, like a noonday dawn, there shone 

again 
Deliverance. One stood on my path 

who seemed 
As like the glorious shape which I had 

dreamed, 
As is the Moon, whose changes ever run 
Into themselves, to the eternal Sun; 
The cold chaste Moon, the Queen of 

Heaven's bright isles. 
Who makes all beautiful on which she 

smiles. 
That wandering shrine of soft yet icy 

flame 
Which ever is transformed, yet still the 

same. 
And warms not but illumines. Young 

and fair 
As the descended Spirit of that sphere. 
She hid me, as the Moon may hide the 

night 



From its own darkness, until all was 

bright I 

Between the Heaven and Earth of my 

calm mind. 
And, as a cloud charioted by the wind. 
She led me to a cave in that wild place. 
And sate beside me, with her downward \ 

face , 

Illumining my slumbers, like the Moon 
Waxing and waning o'er Endymion. 
And I was laid asleep, spirit and limb. 
And all my being became bright or dim 
As the Moon's image in a summer sea, 
According as she smiled or frowned on 

me; 
And there I lay, within a chaste cold 

bed: 
Alas, I then was nor alive nor dead: — 
For at her silver voice came Death and 

Life, 
Unmindful each of their accustomed 

strife, 
Maskt like twin babes, a sister and a 

brother. 
The wandering hopes of one abandoned 

mother, 
And thro' the cavern without wings they 

flew. 
And cried '* Away, he is not of our 

crew." 
I wept, and tho' it be a dream, I 

weep. 

What storms then shook the ocean of 

my sleep. 
Blotting that Moon, whose pale and 

waning lips 
Then shrank as in the sickness of 1 

eclipse; — 
And how my soul was as a lampless 

sea. 
And who was then its Tempest; and 

when She, 
The Planet of that hour, was quencht. 

what frost 
Crept o'er those waters, till from coast to 

coast ;.: 

The moving billows of my beiiig fell 
Into a death of ice, immovable; — 
And then — what earthquakes made it 

gape and split. 
The white Moon smiling all the while on 

it, 



EPIPS YCHIDION. 



415 



These words conceal: — If not, each 

word would be 
The key of stanchless tears. Weep not 

for me I 

At length, into the obscure Forest 

came 
The Vision I had sought thro' grief and 

shame. 
Athwart that wintry wilderness of thorns 
Flasht from her motion splendor like 

the Morn's, 
And from her presence life was radiated 
Thro' the gray earth and branches bare 

and dead; 
So that her way was paved, and rooft 

above 
With flowers as soft as thoughts of bud- 
ding love; 
And music from her respiration spread 
Like light, — all other sounds were pene- 
trated 
By the small, still, sweet spirit of that 

sound. 
So that the savage winds hung mute 

around; 
And odors warm and fresh fell from her 

hair 
Dissolving the dull cold in the frore air : 
Soft as an Incarnation of the Sun, 
When light is changed to love, this 

glorious One 
Floated into the cavern where I lay. 
And called my Spirit, and the dreaming 

clay 
Was lifted by the thing that dreamed 

below 
As smoke by fire, and in her beauty's 

glow 
I stood, and felt the dawn of my long 

night 
Was penetrating me with living light : 
I knew it was the Vision veiled from me 
So many years — that it was Emily. 

Twin Spheres of light who rule this 

passive Earth, 
This world of love, this me; and into 

birth 
Awaken all its fruits and flowers, and 

dart 
Magnetic might into its central heart; 



And lift its billows and its mists, and 

guide 
By everlasting laws, each wind and tide 
To its fit cloud, and its appointed cave; 
And lull its storms, each in the craggy 

grave 
Which was its cradle, luring to faint 

bowers 
The armies of the rainbow-winged 

showers; 
And, as those married lights, which 

from the towers 
Of Heaven look forth and fold the 

wandering globe 
In liquid sleep and splendor, as a robe; 
And all their many-mingled influence 

blend, 
If equal, yet unlike, to one sweet end; — 
So ye, bright regents, with alternate 

sway 
Govern my sphere of being, night and 

day ! 
Thou, not disdaining even a borrowed 

might; 
Thou, not eclipsing a remoter light; 
And, thro' the shadow of the seasons 

three. 
From Spring to Autumn's sere maturity, 
Light it into the Winter of the tomb. 
Where it may ripen to a brighter bloom. 
Thou too, O Comet beautiful and fierce. 
Who drew the heart of this frail Universe 
Towards thine own; till, wreckt in that 

convulsion. 
Alternating attraction and repulsion. 
Thine went astray and that was rent in 

twain; 
Oh, float into our azure heaven again ! 
Be there love's folding-star at thy return; 
The living Sun will feed thee from its 

urn 
Of golden fire; the Moon will veil her 

horn 
In thy last smiles; adoring Even and 

Morn 
Will worship thee with incense of calm 

breath 
And lights and shadows; as the star of 

Death 
And Birth is worshipt by those sisters 

wild 
Called Hope and Fear — upon the heart 

are piled 



4i6 



EPIPS YC HID ION. 



Their offerings, — of this sacrifice divine 
A World shall be the altar. 

Lady mine, 
Scorn not these flowers of thought, the 

fading birth 
Which from its heart of hearts that plant 

puts forth 
Whose fruit, made perfect by thy sunny 

eyes, 
Will be as of the trees of Paradise. 

The day is come, and thou wilt fly 

with me. 
To whatsoe'er of dull mortality 
Is mine, remain a vestal sister still; 
To the intense, the deep, the imperish- 
able, 
Not mine but me, henceforth be thou 

united 
Even as a bride, delighting and de- 
lighted. 
The hour is come: — the destined Star 

has risen 
Which shall descend upon a vacant 

prison. 
The walls are high, the gates are strong, 

thick set 
The sentinels — but true love never yet 
Was thus constrained : it overleaps all 

fence : 
Like lightning, with invisible violence 
Piercing its continents; like Heaven's 

free breath. 
Which he who grasps can hold not; 

liker Death, 
Who rides upon a thought, and makes 

his way 
Thro' temple, tower, and palace, and 

the array 
Of arms: more strength has Love than 

he or they; 
For it can burst his charnel, and make 

free 
The limbs in chains, the heart in 

agony. 
The soul in dust and chaos. 

Emily, 
A ship is floating in the harbor now, 
A wind is hovering o'er the mountain's 

brow; 
There is a path on the sea's azure floor. 
No keel has ever ploughed that path 

before; 



The halcyons brood around the foamless 

isles; 
The treacherous Ocean has forsworn its 

wiles; 
The merry mariners are bold and free : 
Say, my heart's sister, wilt thou sail 

with me? 
Our bark is as an albatross, whose nest 
Is a far Eden of the purple East; 
And we between her wings will sit, while 

Night 
And Day, and Storm, and Calm, pursue 

their flight, 
Our ministers, along the boundless Sea, 
Treading each other's heels, unheededly. 
It is an isle under Ionian skies, 
Beautiful as a wreck of Paradise, 
And, for the harbors are not safe and 

good, 
This land would have remained a soli- 
tude 
But for some pastoral people native 

there, 
Who from the Elysian, clear, and golden 

air 
Draw the last spirit of the age of gold, 
Simple and spirited, innocent and bold. 
The blue iEgean girds this chosen 

home, 
With ever-changing sound and light and 

foam. 
Kissing the sifted sands, and caverns 

hoar; 
And all the winds wandering along the 

shore 
Undulate with the undulating tide : 
There are thick woods where sylvan 

forms abide; 
And many a fountain, rivulet, and pond, 
As clear as elemental diamond. 
Or serene morning air; and far beyond, 
The mossy tracks made by the goats and 

deer 
(Which the rough shepherd treads but 

once a year). 
Pierce into glades, caverns, and bowers, 

and halls 
Built round with ivy, which the water- 
falls 
Illumining, with sound that never fails 
Accompany the noonday nightingales; 
And all the place is peopled with sweet 
airs; 



EPIPS YC HI DION. 



417 



The light clear element which the isle 

wears 
Is heavy with the scent of lemon-flowers. 
Which floats like mist laden with unseen 

showers 
And falls upon the eyelids like faint 

sleep; 
And from the moss violets and jonquils 

peep, 
And dart their arrowy odor thro' the 

brain 
Till you might faint with that delicious 

pain. 
And every motion, odor, beam, and 

tone. 
With that deep music is in unison : 
Which is a soul within the soul — they 

seem 
Like echoes of an antenatal dream. — 
It is an isle 'twixt Heaven, Air, Earth, 

and Sea, 
Cradled, and hung in clear tranquillity; 
Bright as that wandering Eden Lucifer, 
Washt by the soft blue Oceans of young 

air. 
It is a favored place. Famine or Blight, 
Pestilence, War, and Earthquake, never 

light 
Upon its mountain-peaks; blind vultures, 

they 
Sail onward far upon their fatal way : 
The winged storms, chanting their thun- 
der-psalm 
To other lands, leave azure chasms of 

calm 
Over this isle, or weep themselves in 

dew. 
From which its fields and woods ever re- 
new 
Their green and golden immortality. 
And from the sea there rise, and from the 

sky 
There fall, clear exhalations, soft and 

bright. 
Veil after veil, each hiding some delight, 
Which Sun or Moon or zephyr draw aside. 
Till the isle's beauty, like a naked bride 
Glowing at once with love and loveliness. 
Blushes and trembles at its own excess : 
Yet, like a buried lamp, a Soul no less 
Burns in the heart of this delicious isle, 
An atom of the Eternal, whose own smile 
Unfolds itself, and may be felt, not seen 



O'er the gray rocks, blue waves, and for- 
ests green, 
Filling their bare and void interstices. — 
But the chief marvel mi the wilderness 
Is a lone dwelling, built by whom or how 
None of the rustic island-people know: 
'Tis not a tower of strength, tho' with its 

height 
It overtops the woods; but, for delight, 
Some wise and tender Ocean-King, ere 

crime 
Had been invented, in the world's young 

prime. 
Reared it, a wonder of that simple time. 
An envy of the isles, a pleasure-house 
Made sacred to his sister and his spouse. 
It scarce seems now a wreck of human 

art, 
But, as it were Titanic; in the heart 
Of Earth having assumed its form, then 

grown 
Out of the mountains, from the living 

stone. 
Lifting itself in caverns light and high : 
For all the antique and learned imagery 
Has been erased, and in the place of it 
The ivy and the wild-vine interknit 
The volumes of their many-twining stems; 
Parasite flowers illume with dewy gems 
The lampless halls, and when they fade, 

the sky 
Peeps through their winter-woof of tra- 
cery 
With moonlight patches, or star-atoms 

keen. 
Or fragments of the day's intense se- 
rene; — 
Working mosaic on the Parian floors. 
And, day and night, aloof, from the high 

towers 
And terraces, the Earth and Ocean seem 
To sleep in one another's arms, and 

dream 
Of waves, flowers, clouds, woods, rocks, 

and all that we 
Read in their smiles, and call reality. 

This isle and house are mine, and I 
have vowed 
Thee to be lady of the solitude. — 
And I have fitted up some chambers there 
Looking towards the golden Eastern 
air. 



4i8 



EPIPS Y CHI DION. 



And level with the living winds, which 

flow 
Lake waves above the living waves be- 
low. — 
I have sent books and music there, and 

all 
Those instruments with which high spirits 

call 
The future from its cradle, and the past 
Out of its grave, and make the present 

last 
In thoughts and joys which sleep, but 

can not die, 
Folded within their own eternity. 
Our simple life wants little, and true taste 
Hires not the pale drudge Luxury, to 

waste 
The scene it would adorn, and therefore 

still. 
Nature, with all her children, haunts the 

hill. 
The ring-dove, in the embowering ivy, 

yet 
Keeps up her love-lament, and the owls 

flit 
Round the evening tower, and the young 

stars glance 
Between the quick bats in their twilight 

dance; 
The spotted deer bask in the fresh moon- 
light 
Before our gate, and the slow, silent night 
Is measured by the pants of their calm 

sleep. 
Be this our home in life, and when years 

heap 
Their withered hours, like leaves, on our 

decay. 
Let us become the overhanging day, 
The living soul of this Elysian isle. 
Conscious, inseparable, one. Meanwhile 
We two will rise, and sit, and walk to- 
gether. 
Under the roof of blue Ionian weather, 
And wander in the meadows, or ascend 
The mossy mountains, where the blue 

heavens bend 
With lightest winds, to touch their para- 
mour; 
Or linger, where the pebble-paven shore. 
Under the quick, faint kisses of the sea 
Trembles and sparkles as with ecstasy, — 
Possessing and possest by all that is 



Within that calm circumference of bliss, 
And by each other, till to love and live 
Be one: — or, at the noontide hour, ar- 
rive 
Where some old cavern hoar seems yet 

to keep 
The moonlight of the expired night 

asleep. 
Thro' which the awakened day can never 

peep; 
A veil for our seclusion, close as Night's, 
Where secure sleep may kill thine inno- 
cent lights; 
Sleep, the fresh dew of languid love, the 

rain 
Whose drops quench kisses till they burn 

again. 
And we will talk, until thought's melody 
Become too sweet for utterance, and it 

die 
In words, to live again in looks, which 

dart 
With thrilling tone into the voiceless 

heart. 
Harmonizing silence without a sound. 
Our breath shall intermix, our bosoms 

bound. 
And our veins beat together; and our 

lips 
With other eloquence than words, eclipse 
The soul that burns between them, and 

the wells 
Which boil under our being's inmost 

cells. 
The fountains of our deepest life, shall 

be 
Confused in passion's golden purity. 
As mountain-springs under the morning 

Sun. 
We shall become the same, we shall be 

one 
Spirit within two frames, oh ! wherefore 

two? 
One passion in twin-hearts, which grows 

and grew. 
Till like two meteors of expanding flame, 
Those spheres instinct with it become 

the same. 
Touch, mingle, are transfigured; ever 

still 
Burning, yet ever inconsumable : 
In one another's substance finding 
food, 



EPIPS YC HID ION. 



419 



Like flames too pure and light and un- 

imbued 
To nourish their bright lives with baser 

prey, 
Which point to Heaven and can not pass 

away : 
One hope within two wills, one will 

beneath 
Two overshadowing minds, one life, one 

death. 
One Heaven, one Hell, one immortality, 
And one annihilation. Woe is me ! 
The winged words on which my soul 

would pierce 
Into the height of love's rare Universe, 
Are chains of lead around its flight of 

fire — 
I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire ! 



Weak Verses, go, kneel at your Sover- 
eign's feet, 
And say: — " We are the masters of thy 

slave; 
What wouldest thou with us and ours 

and thine? " 
Then call your sisters from Oblivion's 

cave. 
All singing loud: " Love's very pain is 

sweet. 
But its reward is in the world divine 
Which, if not here, it builds beyond the 

grave." 
So shall ye live when I am there. Then 

haste 
Over the hearts of men, until ye meet 
Marina, Vanna, Primus, and the rest. 
And bid them love each other and be 

blest : 
And leave the troop which errs, and 

which reproves, 
And come and be my guest, — for I am 

Love's. 



FRAGMENTS CONNECTED 
WITH EPIPSYCHIDION. 

Here, my dear friend, is a new book for 

you ; 
I have already dedicated two 
To other friends, one female and one 

male, — 



What you are is a thing that I must veil; 
What can this be to those who praise or 

rail? 
I never was attacht to that great sect 
Whose doctrine is that each one should 

select 
Out of the world a mistress or a friend. 
And all the rest, tho' fair and wise, 

commend 
To cold oblivion — tho' 't is in the 

code 
Of modern morals, and the beaten road 
Which those poor slaves with weary foot- 
steps tread 
Who travel to their home among the 

dead 
By the broad highway of the world — 

and so 
With one sad friend, and many a jealous 

foe. 
The dreariest and the longest journey go. 

Free love has this, different from gold 

and clay, 
That to divide is not to take away. 
Like ocean, which the general north 

wind breaks 
Into ten thousand waves, and each one 

makes 
A mirror of the moon — like some great 

glass. 
Which did distort whatever form might 

pass, 
Dasht into fragments by a playful child, 
Which then reflects its eyes and forehead 

mild; 
Giving for one, which it could ne'er 

express, 
A thousand images of loveliness. 

If I were one whom the loud world 

held wise, 
I should disdain to quote authorities 
In commendation of this kind of love : — 
Why there is first the God in heaven 

aV)Ove, 
Who wrote a book called Nature, 't is to 

be 
Reviewed, I hear, in the next Quarterly; 
And Socrates, the Jesus Christ of Greece, 
And Jesus Christ himself did never cease 
To urge all living things to love each 

other. 



420 



EPIPS YC HID ION. 



And to forgive their mutual faults, and 

smother 
The Devil of disunion in their souls. 

I love you ! — Listen, O embodied Ray 
Of the great Brightness; I must pass 

away 
While you remain, and these light words 

must be 
Tokens by which you may remember me. 
Start not — the thing you are is unbe- 

trayed, 
If you are human, and if but the shade 
Of some sublimer spirit. 

And as to friend or mistress, 't is a form; 
Perhaps I wish you were one. Some 

declare 
You a familiar spirit, as you are; 
Others with a more inhuman 

Hint that, tho' not my wife, you are a 

woman, 
What is the color of your eyes and hair? 
Why, if you were a lady, it were fair 
The world should know — but, as I am 

afraid. 
The Quarterly would bait you if betrayed; 
And if, as it will be sport to see them 

stumble 
Over all sorts of scandals, hear them 

mumble 
Their litany of curses — some guess right. 
And others swear you 're a Hermaph- 
rodite; 
Like that sweet marble monster of both 

sexes. 
With looks so sweet and gentle that it 

vexes 
The very soul that the soul is gone 
Which lifted from her limbs the veil of 

stone. 

It is a sweet thing, friendship, a dear 
balm, 

A happy and auspicious bird of calm, 

Which rides o'er life's ever tumultuous 
Ocean; 

A God that broods o'er chaos in com- 
motion ; 

A flower which fresh as Lapland roses 
are, 

Lifts its bold head into the world's frore 
air, 



And blooms most radiantly when others I 

die, 

Health, hope, and youth, and brief pros- 
perity; 
And with the light and odor of its bloom, ! 
Shining within the dungeon and the 

tomb; 
Whose coming is as light and music are 
Mid dissonance and gloom — a star 
Which moves not mid the moving 

heavens alone — 
A smile among dark frowns- — ^a gentle 

tone 
Among rude voices, a beloved light, 
A solitude, a refuge, a delight. 
If I had but a friend ! Why, I have 

three 
Even by my own confession; there may 

be 
Some more, for what I know, for 't is 

my mind 
To call my friends all who are wise and 

kind, — 
And these, Heaven knows, at best are 

very few; 
But none can ever be more dear than 

you. 
Why should they be? My muse has lost 

her wings. 
Or like a dying swan who soars and 

sings, 
I should describe you in heroic style, 
But as it is, are you not void of guile? 
A lovely soul, formed to be blest and 

bless: 
A well of sealed and secret happiness; 
A lute which those whom Love has 

taught to play 
Make music on to cheer the roughest 

day, 
And enchant sadness till it sleeps? 

To the oblivion whither I and thou, 
All loving and all lovely, hasten now 
With steps, ah, too unequal ! may we 

meet 
In one Elysium or one winding sheet ! 

If any should be curious to discover 
Whether to you I am a friend or lover, 
Let them read Shakespeare's sonnets, 

taking thence 
A whetstone for their dull intelligence 



EPIPS YC HID ION. 



421 



That tears and will not cut, or let them 

guess 
How Diotima, the wise prophetess, 
Instructed the instructor, and why he 
Rebuked the infant spirit of melody 
On Agathon's sweet lips, which as he 

spoke 
Was as the lovely star when morn has 

broke 
The roof of darkness, in the golden 

dawn. 
Half-hidden, and yet beautiful. 

I'll pawn 
My hopes of Heaven — you know what 

they are vvort|i — 
That the presumptuous pedagogues of 

Earth, 
If they could tell the riddle offered here 
Would scorn to be, or being to appear 
What now they seem and are — but let 

them chide, 
They have few pleasures in the world 

beside; 
Perhaps we should be dull were we not 

chidden. 
Paradise fruits are sweetest when for- 
bidden. 
Folly can season Wisdom, Hatred Love, 

Farewell, if it can be to say farewell 
To those who — 

I will not, as most dedicators do. 
Assure myself and all the world and you. 
That you are faultless — would to God 

they were 
Who taunt me with your love ! I then 

should wear 
These heavy chains of life with a light 

spirit, 
And would to God I were, or even as 

near it 
As you, dear heart. Alas ! what are we? 

Clouds 
Driven by the wind in warring multi- 
tudes. 
Which rain into the bosom of the earth, 
And rise again, and in our death and 

birth. 
And thro' our restless life, take as from 

heaven 
Hues which are not our own, but which 

are given, 



And then withdrawn, and with incon- 
stant glance 

Flash from the spirit to the countenance. 

There is a Power, a Love, a Joy, a God 

Which makes in mortal hearts its brief 
abode, 

A Pythian exhalation, which inspires 

Love, only love — a wind which o'er the 
wires 

Of the soul's giant harp — 

There is a mood which language faints 
beneath; 

You feel it striding, as Almighty Death 

His bloodless steed. 

And what is that most brief and bright 

delight 
Which rushes through the touch and 

through the sight. 
And stands before the spirit's inmost 

throne, 
A naked Seraph? None hath ever 

known. 
Its birth is darkness, and its growth 

desire; 
Untameable and fleet and fierce as fire. 
Not to Ije touched but to be felt alone. 
It fills the world with glory — and is 

gone. 

It floats with rainbow pinions o'er the 

stream 
Of life, which flows, like a dream 

Into the light of morning, to the grave 
As to an ocean. 

What is that joy which serene infancy 
Perceives not, as the hours content them 

.by' . 

Each in a chain of blossoms, yet enjoys 
The shapes of this new world, in giant 

toys 
Wrought by the busy ever new ? 

Remembrance, borrows Fancy's glass, to 

show 
These forms more sincere 

Than now they are, than then, perhaps, 

they were. 
When everything familiar seemed to be 
Wonderful, and the immortality 
Of this great world, which all things 

must inherit, 



422 



A DONA IS. 



Was felt as one with the awakening 

spirit, 
Unconscious of itself, and of the strange 
Distinctions which in its proceeding 

change 
It feels and knows, and mourns as if 

each were 
A desolation. 

Were it not a sweet refuge, Emily, 

For all those exiles from the dull insane 

Who vex this pleasant world with pride 

and pain. 
For all that band of sister-spirits known 
To one another by a voiceless tone ? 



ADONAIS: 

AN ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF JOHN 
KEATS, AUTHOR OF ENDYMION, 
HYPERION, Etc. 

'AcTrjp TTpXv \i.'iv riXaixne^ evl ^ojoicrii' 'Etoo?* 
NOv de Oavoii' AafXTrets 'EcTTrepos iy (^^t/aevots. 

Plato. 

PREFACE. 

<PdpiJ.aKOv ?i\Oe, Btwv, ttotI abv crrofia, (/xxp/xa^ov 

Ho)? rev Toi? xeiXeacn noTeSpafxe, kovk ey\v- 

Kavdrj ; 
Tt? 8e ^poTo? ToacrovToi' ai'afxepo?, yj Kepa.(rai. rot, 
*H Sovfat KaKeovTL to <^ap/aa/coi' ,• e/cc^uyef (LSdv. 
MoscHus, Epitaph. Bion. 

It is my intention to subjoin to the 
London edition of this poem a criticism 
upon the claims of its lamented object to 
be classed among the writers of the higliest 
genius who have adorned our age. My 
known repugnance to the narrow princi- 
ples of taste on which several of his earlier 
compositions were modelled prove at 
least that I am an impartial judge. I 
consider the fragment of Hyperion, as 
second to nothing that was ever produced 
by a writer of the same years. 

John Keats died at Rome of a con- 
sumption, in his twenty-fourth year, on 

the of 1 821; and was buried 

in the romantic and lonely cemetery of 
the Protestants in that city, under the 
pyramid which is the tomb of Cestius, 
and the massy walls and towers, now 
mouldering and desolate, which formed 



the circuit of ancient Rome. The ceme- 
tery is an open space among the ruins, 
covered in winter with violets and daisi'js. 
It might make one in love with death, to 
think that one should be buried in so 
sweet a place. 

The genius of the lamented person to : 
whose memory I have dedicated these I 
unworthy verses was not less delicate 1 
and fragile than it was beautiful; and j 
where cankerworms abound, what won- ' 
der if its young flower was blighted in 
the bud? The savage criticism on his 
Endymion, which appeared in the Quar- 
terly Review^ produced the most violent 
effect on his susceptible mind; the agita- 
tion thus originated ended in the rupture 
of a bloodvessel in the lungs; a rapid 
consumption ensued, and the succeed- ^ 
ing acknowledgments from more candid < 
critics of the true greatness of his pow- 
ers were ineffectual to heal the wound 
thus wantonly inflicted. 

It may be well said that these wretched 
men know not what they do. They 
scatter their insults and their slanders 
without heed as to whether the poisoned 
shaft lights on a heart made callous by 
many blows, or one like Keats's com- 
posed of more penetrable stuff. One of 
their associates is, to my knowledge, a 
most base and unprincipled calumniator. 
As to " Endymion," was it a poem, 
whatever might be its defects, to be 
treated contemptuously by those who had 
celebrated, with various degrees of com- 
placency and panegyric, "Paris," and 
"Woman," and a "Syrian Tale," and 
Mrs. Lefanu, and Mr. Barrett, and Mr. 
Howard Payne, and a long list of the 
illustrious obscure? Are these the men 
who in their venal good nature presumed 
to draw a parallel between the Rev. Mr. 
Milman and Lord Byron? What gnat 
did they strain at here, after having 
swallowed all those camels? Against 
what woman taken in adultery dares the 
foremost of these literary prostitutes to 
cast his opprobrious stone? Miserable , 
man ! you, one of the meanest, have 
wantonly defaced one of the noblest 
specimens of the workman^ip of God. 
Nor shall it be your excuse, that, mur- 



ADONAIS. 



423 



derer as you are, you have spoken dag- 
gers, but used none. 

The circumstances of the closing scene 
of poor Keats's Hfe were not made known 
to me until the Elegy was ready for the 
press. I am given to understand that 
the wound which his sensitive spirit had 
received from the criticism of Endymion 
was exasperated by the bitter sense of 
unrequited benefits; the poor fellow 
seems to have been hooted from the stage 
of life, no less by those on whom he had 
wasted the promise of his genius, than 
those on whom he had lavished his for- 
tune and his care. He was accompanied 
to Rome, and attended in his last illness 
by Mr. Severn, a young artist of the 
highest promise, who, I have been in- 
formed, *' almost risked his own life, and 
sacrificed every prospect to unwearied 
attendance upon his dying friend." Had 
I known these circumstances before the 
completion of my poem, I should have 
been tempted to add my feeble tribute of 
applause to the more solid recompense 
which the virtuous man finds in the recol- 
lection of his own motives. Mr. Severn 
can dispense with a reward from "such 
stuff as dreams are made of." His con- 
duct is a golden augury of the success of 
his future career — may the unextin- 
guished Spirit of his illustrious friend 
animate the creations of his pencil, and 
plead against Oblivion for his name ! 



ADONAIS 



I WEEP for Adonais — he is dead ! 
Oh weep for Adonais ! tho' our tears 
Thaw not the frost which binds so 

dear a head ! 
And thou, sad Hour, selected from all 

years 
To mourn our loss, rouse thy obscure 

compeers. 
And teach them thine own sorrow ! 

. Say: "With me 
Died Adonais; till the future dares 



Forget the Past, his fate and fame 
shall be 
An echo and a light unto eternity ! " 



Where wert thou mighty Mother, when 

he lay. 
When thy Son lay, pierced by the 

shaft which flies 
In darkness? where was lorn Urania 
When Adonais died? With veiled 

eyes. 
Mid listening Echoes, in her Paradise 
She sate, while one, with soft enam- 
oured breath. 
Rekindled all the fading melodies, 
With which, like flowers that mock 
the corse beneath. 
He had adorned and hid the coming 
bulk of death. 

III. 

Oh weep for Adonais — he is dead ! 
Wake, melancholy Mother, wake and 

weep ! 
Yet wherefore? Quench within their 

burning bed 
Thy fiery tears, and let thy loud heart 

keep 
Like his, a mute and uncomplaining 

sleep; 
For he is gone, where all things wise 

and fair 
Descend; — oh, dream not that the 

amorous Deep 
Will yet restore him to the vital air; 
Death feeds on his mute voice, and 

laughs at our despair. 



IV. 



Most musical of mourners, weep 
again ! 

Lament anew, Urania! — He died. 

Who was the Sire of an immortal 
strain, 

BHnd, old, and lonely, when his coun- 
try's pride. 

The priest, the slave, and the liberti- 
cide, 

Trampled and mockt with many a 
loathed rite 



424 



ADONAIS. 



Of lust and blood; he went, un- 

terrified, 
Into the gulf of death; but his clear 

Sprite 
Yet reigns o'er earth; the third among 

the sons of light. 



Most musical of mourners, weep 

anew ! 
Not all to that bright station dared to 

climb; 
And happier they their happiness who 

knew, 
Whose tapers yet burn thro' that night 

of time 
In which suns perisht; others more 

sublime. 
Struck by the envious wrath of man or 

God, 
Have sunk, extinct in their refulgent 

prime; 
And some yet live, treading the thorny 

road, 
Which leads, thro' toil and hate, to 

Fame's serene abode. 

VI. 

But now, thy youngest, dearest one 

has perisht. 
The nursling of thy widowhood, who 

grew, 
Like a pale flower by some sad maiden 

cherisht. 
And fed with true-love tears, instead 

of dew; 
Most musical of mourners, weep 

anew ! 
Thy extreme hope, the loveliest and 

the last. 
The bloom, whose petals nipt before 

they blew 
Died on the promise of the fruit, is 

waste; 
The broken lily lies — the storm is over- 
past. 

VII. 

To that high Capital, where kingly 

Death 
Keeps his pale court in beauty and 

decay, 



He came; and bought, with price of I 

purest breath, 
A grave among the eternal. — Come 

away ! 
Haste, while the vault of blue Italian 

day 
Is yet his fitting charnel-roof ! while 

still 
He lies, as if in dewy sleep he lay; 
Awake him not ! surely he takes his 

f^ll 
Of deep and liquid rest, forgetful of all 

ill. 

VIII. 

He will awake no more, oh, never 

more ! — 
Within the twilight chamber spreads 

apace, 
The shadow of white Death, and at 

the door 
Invisible Corruption waits to trace 
His extreme way to her dim dwelling- 
place; 
The eternal Hunger sits, but pity and 

awe 
Soothe her pale rage, nor dares she to 

deface 
So fair a prey, till darkness, and the 

law 
Of change shall o'er his sleep the mortal 

curtain draw. 



IX. 



Oh weep for Adonais ! — The quick 

Dreams, 
The passion - winged Ministers of 

thought. 
Who were his flocks, whom near the 

living streams 
Of his young spirit he fed, and whom 

he taught 
The love which was its music, wander 

not, — 
Wander no more, from kindling brain 

to brain, 
But droop there, whence they sprung; | 

and mourn their lot i 

Round the cold heart, where, after 

their sweet pain, 
They ne'er will gather strength, or Jind 

a home again. 



ADONAIS. 



425 



X. 

And one with trembling hands clasps 

his cold head, 
And fans him with her moonlight 

wings, and cries; 
" Our love, our hope, our sorrow, is 

not dead; 
See, on the silken fringe of his faint 

eyes, 
Like dew upon a sleeping flower, there 

lies 
A tear some Dream has loosened 

from his brain," 
Lost Angel of a ruined Paradise ! 
She knew not 't was her own; as with 

no stain 
She faded, like a cloud which had out- 
wept its rain. 

XI. 

One from a lucid urn of starry dew 
Washt his light limbs as if embalming 

them; 
Another dipt her profuse locks, and 

threw 
The wreath upon him, like an anadem, 
Which frozen tears instead of pearls 

begem; 
Another in her wilful grief would break 
Her bow and winged reeds, as if to 

stem 
A greater loss with one which was 

more weak; 
And dull the barbed fire against his 

frozen cheek. 

XII. 

Another Splendor on his mouth alit, 

That mouth, whence it was wont to 
draw the breath 

Which gave it strength to pierce the 
guarded wit, 

And pass into the panting heart be- 
neath 

With lightning and with music : the 
damp death 

Quencht its caress upon his icy lips; 

And, as a dying meteor stains a wreath 

Of moonlight vapor, which the cold 
night clips. 
It flusht thro' his pale limbs, and past to 
its eclipse. 



XIII. 

And others came . . . Desires and 
Adorations, 

Winged Persuasions and veiled Des- 
tinies, 

Splendors, and Glooms, and glimmer- 
ing Incarnations 

Of hopes and fears, and twilight 
Fantasies; 

And Sorrow, with her family of Sighs, 

And Pleasure, blind with tears, led by 
the gleam 

Of her own dying smile instead of eyes. 

Came in slow pomp; — the moving 
pomp might seem 
Like pageantry of mist on an autunmal 
stream. 

XIV. 

All he had loved, and moulded into 

thought. 
From shape, and hue, and odor, and 

sweet sound. 
Lamented Adonais. Morning sought 
Her eastern watchtower, and her hair 

unbound. 
Wet with the tears which should adorn 

the ground. 
Dimmed the aerial eyes that kindle 

day; 
Afar the melancholy thunder moaned, 
Pale Ocean in unquiet slumber lay, 
And the wild winds flew round, sobbing 

in their dismay. 

XV. 

Lost Echo sits amid the voiceless 

mountains. 
And feeds her grief with his remem- 
bered lay. 
And will no more reply to winds or 

fountains, 
Or amorous birds percht on the young 

green spray. 
Or herdsman's horn, or bell at closing 

day; 
Since she can mimic not his lips, more 

dear 
Than those for whose disdain she 

pined away 
Into a shadow of all sounds : — a drear 
Murmur, between their songs, is all the 

woodmen hear. 



426 



A DONA IS. 



XVI. 

Grief made the young Spring wild, 

and she threw down 
Her kindling buds, as if she Autumn 

were. 
Or they dead leaves; since her delight 

is flown 
For whom should she have waked the 

sullen year? 
To Phoebus was not Hyacinth so dear 
Nor to himself Narcissus, as to both 
Thou, Adonais: wan they stand and 

sere 
Amid the faint companions of their 

youth, 
With dew all turned to tears; odor, to 

sighing ruth. 

XVII. 

Thy spirit's sister, the lorn nightingale 
Mourns not her mate with such melo- 
dious pain; 
Not so the eagle, who like thee could 

scale 
Heaven, and could nourish in the 

sun's domain 
Her mighty youth with morning, doth 

complain. 
Soaring and screaming round her 

empty nest, 
As Albion wails for thee: the curse 

of Cain 
Light on his head who pierced thy 

innocent breast. 
And scared the angel soul that was its 

earthly guest ! 

XVIII. 

Ah woe is me ! Winter is come and 
gone. 

But grief returns with the revolving 
year; 

The airs and streams renew their joy- 
ous tone; 

The ants, the bees, the swallows re- 
appear; 

Fresh leaves and flowers deck the dead 
Seasons' bier; 

The amorous birds now pair in every 
brake, 

And build their mossy homes in field 
and brere; 



And the green lizard, and the golden 
snake. 
Like unimprisoned flames, out of theii 
trance awake. 

XIX. 

Thro' wood and stream and field and 

hill and Ocean 
A quickening life from the Earth's 

heart has burst 
As it has ever done, with change and 

motion. 
From the great morning of the world 

when first 
God dawned on Chaos; in its stream 

immerst 
The lamps of Heaven flash with a 

softer light; 
All baser things pant with life's sacred 

thirst; 
Diffuse themselves; and spend in 

love's delight. 
The beauty and the joy of their renewed 

might. 

XX. 

The leprous corpse toucht by this 

spirit tender 
Exhales itself in flowers of gentle 

breath; 
Like incarnations of the stars, when 

splendor 
Is changed to fragrance, they illumine 

death 
And mock the merry worm that wakes 

beneath; 
Naught we know, dies. Shall that 

alone which knows 
Be as a sword consumed before the 

sheath 
By sightless lightning? — the intense 

atom glows 
A moment, then is quencht in a most 

cold repose. 

XXI. 

Alas ! that all we loved of him should 

be. 
But for our grief, as if it had not been, 
And grief itself be mortal ! Woe is 

me ! 
Whence are we, and why a;:e we? of 

what scene 



ADONAIS. 



427 



The actors or spectators? Great and 

mean 
Meet massed in death, who lends whar 

life must borrow. 
As long as skies are blue, and fields 

are green. 
Evening must usher night, night urge 

the morrow. 
Month follow month with woe, and year 

wake year to sorrow. 

XXII. 

He will awake no more, oh, never 
more ! 

**Wake thou," cried Misery, "child- 
less Mother,- rise 

Out of thy sleep, and slake, in thy 
heart's core, 

A wound more fierce than his with 
tears and sighs." 

And all the Dreams that watcht 
Urania's eyes, 

And all the Echoes whom their sister's 
song 

Had held in holy silence, cried: 
"Arise! " 

Swift as a Thought by the snake Mem- 
ory stung, 
From her ambrosial rest the fading 
Splendor sprung. 

XXIII. 

She rose like an autumnal Night, that 

springs 
Out of the East, and follows wild and 

drear 
The golden Day, which, on eternal 

wings, 
Even as a ghost abandoning a bier. 
Had left the Earth a corpse. Sorrow 

and fear 
So struck, so roused, so rapt Urania; 
So saddened round her like an atmos- 
phere 
Of stormy mist; so swept her on her 

way 
I Even to the mournful place where Ado- 

nais lay. 

XXIV. 

Out of her secret Paradise she sped. 
Thro' camps and cities rough with 
stone, and steel, 



And human hearts, which to her airy 
tread 

Yielding not, wounded the invisible 

Palms of her tender feet where'er 
they fell : 

And barbed tongues, and thoughts 
more sharp than they 

Rent the soft Form they never could 
repel. 

Whose sacred blood, like the young 
tears of May, 
Paved with eternal flowers that undeserv- 
ing way. 



XXV. 

In the death chamber for a moment 

Death, 
Shamed by the presence of that living 

Might, 
Blusht to annihilation, and the breath 
Revisited those lips, and life's pale 

light 
Flasht thro' those limbs, so late her 

dear delight. 
"Leave me not wild and drear and 

comfortless, 
As silent lightning leaves the starless 

night ! 
Leave me not!" cried Urania: her 

distress 
Roused Death: Death rose and smiled, 

and met her vain caress. 



XXVI. 

" Stay yet awhile ! speak to me once 

again ; 
Kiss me, so long but as a kiss may 

live; 
And in my heartless breast and burn- 
ing brain 
That word, that kiss shall all thoughts 

else survive. 
With food of saddest memory kept 

alive. 
Now thou art dead, as if it were a 

part 
Of thee, my Adonais ! I would give 
All that I am to be as thou now art ! 
But I am chained to Time, and can not 

thence depart ! 



+28 



ADONAIS. 



XXVII. 

*'0 gentle child, beautiful as thou 

wert, 
Why didst thou leave the trodden 

paths of men 
Too soon, and with weak hands tho' 

mighty heart 
Dare the unpastured dragon in his 

den? 
Defenceless as thou wert, oh where was 

then 
Wisdom the mirrored shield, or scorn 

the spear? 
Or hadst thou waited the full cycle, 

when 
Thy spirit should have filled its cres- 
cent sphere. 
The monsters of life's waste had fled 

from thee like deer. 

XXVIII. 

"The herded wolves, bold only to 

pursue; 
The obscene ravens, clamorous o'er 

the dead; 
The vultures to the conqueror's banner 

true 
Who feed where Desolation first has 

fed, 
And whose wings rain contagion; — 

how they fled. 
When like Apollo, from his golden 

bow, 
The Pythian of the age one arrow sped 
And smiled ! — The spoilers tempt no 

second blow, 
They fawn on the proud feet that spurn 

them lying low. 

XXIX. 

**The sun comes forth, and many rep- 
tiles spawn; 

He sets, and each ephemeral insect 
then 

Is gathered into death without a dawn, 

And the immortal stars awake again; 

So is it in the world of living men : 

A godlike mind soars forth, in its de- 
light 

Making earth bare and veiling heaven, 
and when 



It sinks, the swarms that dimmed or 
shared its light 
Leave to its kindred lamp the spirit's 
awful night." 

XXX. 

Thus ceased she : and the mountain 

shepherds came. 
Their garlands sere, their magic man- 
tles rent; 
The Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame 
Over his living head like Heaven is 

bent. 
An early but enduring monument. 
Game, veiling all the lightnings of his 

song 
In sorrow; from her wilds lerne sent 
The sweetest lyrist of her saddest 
wrong, 
And love taught grief to fall like music 
from his tongue. 

XXXI. 

Midst others of less note, came one 
frail Form, 

A phantom among men; companion- 
less 

As the last cloud of an expiring storm 

Whose thunder is its knell; he, as I 
guess. 

Had gazed on Nature's naked loveli- 
ness, 

Actaeon-like, and now he fled astray 
With feeble steps o'er the world's wilder- 
ness. 

And his own thoughts, along that 
rugged way. 
Pursued, like raging hounds, their father 
and their prey. 

XXXII. 

A pardlike Spirit beautiful and swift — 
A Love in desolation maskt; — a 

Power 
Girt round with weakness; — it can 

scarce uplift 
The weight of the superincumbent 

hour; 
It is a dying lamp, a falling shower, 
A breaking billow; — even whilst we 

speak 



ADO NATS. 



429 



Is it not broken? On the withering 

flower 
The killing sun smiles brightly : on a 

cheek 
The life can burn in blood, even while 

the heart may break. 

XXXIII. 

His head was bound with pansies over- 
blown, 
And faded violets, white, and pied, 

and blue; 
And a light spear topt with a cypress 

cone. 
Round whose rude shaft dark ivy 

tresses grew 
Yet dripping with the forest's noonday 

dew. 
Vibrated, as the ever-beating heart 
Shook the weak hand that graspt it; 

of that crew 
He came the last, neglected and apart; 
A herd-abandoned deer struck by the 

hunter's dart. 

XXXIV. 

All stood aloof, and at his partial moan 
Smiled thro' their tears; well knew 

that gentle band 
Who in another's fate now wept his 

own; 
As in the accents of an unknown land. 
He* sung new sorrow; sad Urania 

scanned 
The Stranger's mien, and murmured: 

" Who art thou?" 
He answered not, but with a sudden 

hand 
Made bare his branded and ensanguined 

brow. 
Which was like Cain's or Christ's — oh, 

that it should be so ! 

XXXV. 

What softer voice is husht over the 

dead? 
Athwart what brow is that dark mantle 

thrown? 
What form leans sadly o'er the white 

deathbed. 
In mockery of monumental stone, 



The heavy heart heaving without a 
moan? 

If it be He, who, gentlest of the wise, 

Taught, soothed, loved, honored the 
departed one; 

Let me not vex, with inharmonious 
sighs 
The silence of that heart's accepted sac- 
rifice. 

XXXVI. 

Our Adonais has drunk poison — oh ! 
What deaf and viperous murderer could 

crown 
Life's early cup with such a draught 

of woe? 
The nameless worm would now itself 

disown: 
It felt, yet could escape the magic tone 
Whose prelude held all envy, hate, and 

wrong. 
But what was howling in one breast 

alone. 
Silent with expectation of the song. 
Whose master's hand is cold, whose 

silver lyre unstrung. 

XXXVII. 

Live thou, whose infamy is not thy 

fame ! 
Live ! fear no heavier chastisement 

from me. 
Thou noteless blot on a remembered 

name ! 
But be thyself, and know thyself to be ! 
And ever at thy season be thou free 
To spill the venom when thy fangs o'er- 

flow: 
Remorse and Self-contempt shall cling 

to thee; 
Hot Shame shall burn upon thy secret 

brow. 
And like a beaten hound tremble thou 

shalt — as now. 

XXXVIII. 

Nor let us weep that our delight is 

fled 
Far from these carrion kites that 

scream below; 
He wakes or sleeps with the enduring 

dead; 



430 



A DO NATS. 



Thou canst not soar where he is sitting 

now. — 
Dust to the dust ! but the pure spirit 

shall flow 
Back to the burning fountain whence 

it came, 
A portion of the Eternal, which must 

glow 
Thro' time and change, unquenchably 

the same. 
Whilst thy cold embers choke the sordid 

hearth of shame. 

XXXIX. 

Peace, peace ! he is not dead, he doth 

not sleep — 
He hath awakened from the dream of 

life — 
'T is we, who lost in stormy visions, 

keep 
With phantoms an unprofitable strife. 
And in mad trance, strike with our 

spirit's knife 
Invulnerable nothings. — We decay 
Like corpses in a charnel; fear and 

grief 
Convulse us and consume us day by 

day, 
And cold hopes swarm like worms within 

our living clay. • 

XL. 

^ He has outsoared the shadow of our 

night; 
Envy and calumny and hate and pain, 
And that unrest which men miscall 

delight. 
Can touch him not and torture not 

again; 
From the contagion of the world's 

slow stain 
He is secure, and now can never 

mourn 
A heart grown cold, a head grown 

gray in vain; 
Nor, when the spirit's self has ceased 

to burn. 
With sparkless ashes load an unlamented 

urn. 

XLI. 

He lives, he wakes — 't is Death is 
dead, not he; 



Mourn not for Adonais. — Thou young , 

Dawn p 

Turn all thy dew to splendor, for from i 

thee 
The spirit thou lamentest is not gone; 
Ye caverns and ye forests, cease to 

moan ! 
Cease ye faint flowers and fountains, 

and thou Air 
Which like a mourning veil thy scarf 

hadst thrown 
O'er the abandoned Earth, now leave 

it bare 
Even to the joyous stars which smile on 

its despair ! 

XLII. 

He is made one with Nature: there i 

is heard ' 

His voice in all her music, from the 

• moan 
Of thunder to the song of night's j 

sweet bird; j 

He is a presence to be felt and known | 
In darkness and in light, from herb j 

and stone, ' 

Spreading itself where'er that Power 

may move 
Which has withdrawn his being to its 

own; 
Which wields the world with never 

wearied love, 
Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it 

above. 

XLIII. 

He is a portion of the loveliness 
Which once he made more lovely: he 

doth bear 
His part, while the one Spirit's plastic 

stress 
Sweeps thro' the dull dense world, 

compelling there 
All new successions to the forms they 

wear; 
Torturing the unwilling dross that 

checks its flight 
To its own likeness, as each mass may 

bear; 
And bursting in its beauty and its 

might 
From trees and beasts and men into the 

Heaven's light. 



ADONAIS. 



431 



XLIV. 

The splendors of the firmament of 

time 
May be eclipst, but are extinguisht 

not; 
Like stars to their appointed height 

they climb 
And death is a low mist which can not 

blot 
The brightness it may veil. When 

lofty thought 
Lifts a young heart above its mortal 

lair, 
And love and life contend in it, for 

what 
Shall be its earthly doom,' the dead 

live there 
And move like winds of light on dark 

and stormy air. 

XLV. 

The inheritors of unfulfilled renown 
Rose from their thrones, built beyond 

mortal thought, 
Far in the Unapparent. Chatterton 
Rose pale, his solemn agony had not 
Yet faded from him; Sidney, as he 

fought 
And as he fell and as he lived and 

loved 
Sublimely mild, a Spirit without spot, 
Arose; and Lucan, by his death ap- 
proved : 
Oblivion as they rose shrank like a thing 
reproved. 

XLVI. 

And many more, whose names on 
Earth are dark, 

But whose transmitted effluence can- 
not die 

So long as fire outlives the parent 
spark. 

Rose, robed in dazzling immortality. 

"Thou art become as one of us," 
they cry, 

" It was for thee yon kingless sphere 
has long 

Swung blind in unascended majesty, 

Silent alone amid an Heaven of Song. 
Assume thy winged throne, thou Vesper 
of our throng ! " 



XLVII. 

Who mourns for Adonais? Oh come 

forth 
Fond wretch ! and know thyself and 

him aright. 
Clasp with thy panting soul the pen- 
dulous Earth; 
As from a centre, dart thy spirit's 

light 
Beyond all worlds, until its spacious 

might 
Satiate the void circumference : then 

shrink 
Even to a point within our day and 

night; 
And keep thy heart light lest it make 

thee sink 
When hope has kindled hope, and lured 

thee to the brink. 

XLVIII. 

Or go to Rome, which is the sepulchre 
Oh ! not of him, but of our joy: 't is 

naught 
That ages, empires, and religions there 
Lie buried in the ravage they have 

wrought; 
For such as he can lend, — they bor- 
row not 
Glory from those who made the world 

their prey; 
And he is gathered to the kings of 

thought 
Who waged contention with their time's 

decay. 
And of the past are all that can not pass 

away. 

XLIX. 

Go thou to Rome, — at once the Para- 
dise, 

The grave, the city, and the wilder- 
ness; 

And where its wrecks like shattered 
mountains rise. 

And flowering weeds, and fragrant 
copses dress 

The bones of Desolation's nakedness 

Pass, till the Spirit of the spot shall 
lead 

Thy footsteps to a slope of green access 



432 



A DONA IS. 



Where, like an infant's smile, over the 
dead 
A light of laughing flowers along the 
grass is spread. 

L. 

And gray walls moulder round, on 

which dull Time 
Feeds, like slow fire upon a hoary 

brand; 
And one keen pyramid with wedge 

sublime, 
Pavilioning the dust of him who 

planned 
This refuge for his memory, doth stand 
Like flame transformed to marble; and 

beneath, 
A field is spread, on which a newer 

band 
Have pitcht in Heaven's smile their 

camp of death 
Welcoming him we lose with scarce ex- 

tinguisht breath. 

LI. 

Here pause: these graves are all too 

young as yet 
To have outgrown the sorrow which 

consigned 
Its charge to each; and if the seal is 

set. 
Here, on one fountain of a mourning 

mind. 
Break it not thou ! too surely shalt 

thou find 
Thine own well full, if thou returnest 

home, 
Of tears and gall. From the world's 

bitter wind 
Seek shelter in the shadow of the tomb. 
What Adonais is, why fear we to be- 
come? 

LII. 

The One remains, the many change 

and pass; 
Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's 

shadows fly; 
Life, like a dome of many-colored 

glass, 
Stains the white radiance of Eternity, 



Until Death tramples it to fragments. 

— Die, 
If thou wouldst be with that which 

thou dost seek ! 
Follow where all is fled! — Rome's 

azure sky. 
Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words, 

are weak 
The glory they transfuse with fitting 

truth to speak. 

LIII. 

Why linger, why turn back, why shrink, 

my Heart? 
Thy hopes are gone before : from all 

things here 
They have departed; thou shouldst 

now depart ! 
A light is past from the revolving year. 
And man, and woman; and what still 

is dear 
Attracts to crush, repels to make thee 

wither. 
The soft sky smiles, — the low wind 

whispers near; 
'T is Adonais calls ! oh, hasten thither. 
No more let Life divide what Death can 

join together. 

LIV. 

That Light whose smile kindles the 
Universe, 

That Beauty in which all things work 
and move. 

That Benediction which the eclipsing 
Curse 

Of birth can quench not, that sustain- 
ing Love 

Which thro' the web of being blindly 
wove 

By man and beast and earth and air 
and sea. 

Burns bright or dim, as each are mir- 
rors of 

The fire for which all thirst; now beams 
on me. 
Consuming the last clouds of cold mor- 
tality. 

LV. 

The breath whose might I have in- 
voked in song 



A DON A IS. 



433 



Descends on me; my spirit's bark is 

V driven, 

Far from the shore, far from the trem- 
bling throng 

Whose sails were never to the tempest 
given; 

The massy earth and sphered skies are 
riven ! 

I am borne darkly, fearfully, afar; 

Whilst burning thro' the inmost veil of 
Heaven, 

The soul of Adonais, like a star, 
Beacons from the abode where the Eter- 
nal are. 



CANCELLED PASSAGES FROM 
ADONAIS. 

Passages of the Preface. 

. . . the expression of my indignation 
and sympathy. I will allow myself a first 
and last word on the subject of calumny 
as it relates to me. As an author I have 
dared and invited censure. If I under- 
stand myself, I have written neither for 
profit nor for fame. I have employed my 
poetical compositions and publications 
simply as the instruments of that sympa- 
thy between myself and others which the 
ardent and unbounded love I cherished 
for my kind incited me to acquire. I ex- 
pected all sorts of stupidity and insolent 
contempt from those . . . 

. . . These compositions (excepting 
the tragedy of the " Cenci," which was 
written rather to try my powers than to 
unburden my full heart) are insufficiently 
. . . commendation than perhaps they de- 
serve, even from their bitterest enemies; 
but they have not attained any correspond- 
ing popularity. As a man, I shrink from 
notice and regard; the ebb and flow of 
the world vexes me; I desire to be left 
in peace. Persecution, contumely, and 
calumny, have been heaped upon me in 
profuse measure; and domestic conspiracy 
and legal oppression have violated in my 
person the most sacred rights of nature 
and humanity. The bigot will say it was 
the recompense of my errors; the man of 
the world will call it the result of my im- 



prudence; but never upon one head . . . 

. . . Reviewers, with some rare excep- 
tions, are a most stupid and malignant 
race. As a bankrupt thief turns thief- 
taker in despair, so an unsuccessful author 
turns critic. But a young spirit panting 
for fame, doubtful of its powers, and cer- 
tain only of its aspirations, is ill-qualified 
to assign its true value to the sneer of this 
world. He knows not that such stuff as 
this is of the abortive and monstrous 
births which time consumes as fast as it 
produces. He sees the truth and false- 
hood, the merits and demerits, of his case 
inextricably entangled . . . No personal 
offence should have drawn from me this 
public comment upon such stuff . . . 

. . . The offence of this poor victim 
seems to have consisted solely in his in- 
timacy with Leigh Hunt, Mr. Hazlitt, 
and some other enemies of despotism 
and superstition. My friend Hunt has a 
very hard skull to crack, and will take a 
deal of killing. I do not know much of 
Mr. Hazlitt, but . . . 

... I knew personally but little of 
Keats; but on the news of his situation 
I wrote to him, suggesting the propriety 
of trying the Italian climate, and invit- 
ing him to join me. Unfortunately he 
did not allow me . . . 



Passages of the Poem. 

And ever as he went he swept a lyre 
Of unaccustomed shape, and 

strings 
Now like the of impetuous 

fire. 
Which shakes the forest with its mur- 

murings. 
Now like the rush of the aerial wings 
Of the enamoured wind among the 

treen. 
Whispering unimaginable things, 
And dying on the streams of dew 

serene. 
Which feed the unmown meads with 

ever-during green. 

And the green Paradise which western 
waves 



434 



HELLAS, 



Embosom in their ever-wailing sweep, 

Talking of freedom to their tongue- 
less caves, 

Or to the spirits which within them 
keep 

A record of the wrongs which, tho' 
they sleep, 

Die not, but dream of retribution, 
heard 

His hymns, and echoing them from 
steep to steep, 

Kept — 

And then came one of sweet and 

earnest looks. 
Whose soft smiles to his dark and 

night-like eyes 
Were as the clear and ever-living 

brooks 
Are to the obscure fountains whence 

they rise. 
Showing how pure they are : a Paradise 
Of happy truth upon his forehead low 
Lay, making wisdom lovely, in the 

guise 
Of earth-awakening morn upon the 

brow 
Of star-deserted heaven, while ocean 

gleams below. 

His song, though very sweet, was low 

and faint, 
A simple strain — 

A mighty Phantasm, half 
concealed 
In darkness of his own exceeding 

. light, 
Which clothed his awful presence un- 

revealed, 
Charioted on the night 

Of thunder-smoke, whose skirts were 
chrysolite. 

And like a sudden meteor, which out- 
strips 

The splendor-winged chariot of the 
sun, 

eclipse 
The armies of the golden stars, each 

one 
Pavilioned in its tent of light — all 

strewn 
Over the chasms of blue night — 



HELLAS. 

A LYRICAL DRAMA. 

MANTI2 "EIM' 'E20AQN AmNfiN 
CEdip. Colon. 

TO 

HIS EXCELLENCY 
PRINCE ALEXANDER MAVROCORDATO 

LATE SECRETARY FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS 
TO THE HOSPODAR OF WALLACHIA 

THE DRAMA OF HELLAS 

IS INSCRIBED 

AS AN IMPERFECT TOKEN 

OF THE 

ADMIRATION, SYMPATHY, AND FRIENDSHIP 

OF 

THE AUTHOR. 



Pisa, November i, 1821. 



PREFACE. 

The poem of " Hellas," written at the 
suggestion of the events of the moment, 
is a mere improvise, and derives its inter- 
est (should it be found to possess any) 
solely from the intense sympathy which 
the Author feels with the cause he would 
celebrate. 

The subject, in its present state, is in- 
susceptible of being treated otherwise 
than lyrically, and if I have called this 
poem a drama from the circumstance of 
its being composed in dialogue, the 
Hcense is not greater than that which has 
been assumed by other poets who have 
called their productions epics, only be- 
cause they have been divided into twelve 
or twenty-four books. 

The " Persae" of ^schylus afforded me 
the first model of my conception, although 
the decision of the glorious contest now 
waging in Greece being yet suspended 
forbids a catastrophe parallel to the re- 
turn of Xerxes and the desolation of the 
Persians. I have, therefore, contented 



HELLAS. 



435 



myself with exhibiting a series of lyric 
pictures, and with having wrought upon 
the curtain of futurity, which falls upon 
the unfinished scene, such figures of in- 
distinct and visionary delineation as sug- 
gest the final triumph of the Greek cause 
as a portion of the cause of civilization 
and social improvement. 

The drama (if drama it must be called) 
is, however, so inartificial that I doubt 
whether, if recited on the Thespian wag- 
on to an Athenian village at the Diony- 
siaca, it would have obtained the prize 
of the goat. I shall bear with equa- 
nimity any punishment, greater than the 
loss of such a reward which the Aristarchi 
of the hour may think fit to inflict. 

The only goat-song which I have yet 
attempted has, I confess, in spite of the 
unfavorable nature of the subject, re- 
ceived a greater and a more valuable 
portion o< applause than I expected or 
than it d'5«erved. 

Common fame is the only authority 
which I c^n allege for the details which 
form the basis of the poem, and I must 
trespass i*pon the forgiveness of my 
readers for the display of newspaper eru- 
dition to which I have been reduced. 
Undoubt'-dly, until the conclusion of the 
war, it will be impossible to obtain an 
account of it sufficiently authentic for 
historic?' materials; but poets have their 
privilege, and it is unquestionable that 
actions of the most exalted courage have 
been performed by the Greeks — that 
they ho.ve gained more than one naval 
victory, and that their defeat in Walla- 
chia was signalized by circumstances of 
heroism more glorious even than victory. 

The apathy of the rulers of the civilized 
world to the astonishing circumstance of 
the descendants of that nation to which 
they owe their civilization, rising as it 
were from the ashes of their ruin, is 
something perfectly inexplicable to a 
mce spectator of the shows of this mor- 
tal scene. We are all Greeks. Our 
laws, our literjtture, our religion, our arts 
have their root in Greece. But for 
Greece — Rome, the instructor, the con- 
queror, or the metropolis of our ances- 
tors, would have spread no illumination 



with her arms, and we might still have 
been savages and idolaters; or, what is 
worse, might have arrived at such a 
stagnant and miserable state of social 
institution as China and Japan possess. 

The human form and the human mind 
attained to a perfection in Greece which 
has impressed its image on those faultless 
productions, whose very fragments are 
the despair of modern art, and has prop- 
agated impulses which cannot cease, 
through a thousand channels of manifest 
or imperceptible operation, to ennoble 
and delight mankind until the extinction 
of the race. 

The modern Greek is the descendant of 
those glorious beings whom the imagina- 
tion almost refuses to figure to itself as 
belonging to our kind, and he inherits 
much of their sensibility, their rapidity of 
conception, their enthusiasm, and their 
courage. If in many instances he is de- 
graded by moral and political slavery to 
the practice of the basest vices it engen- 
ders, and that below the level of ordinary 
degradation; let us reflect that the cor- 
ruption of the best produces the worst, 
and that habits which subsist only in rela- 
tion to a peculiar state of social institution 
may be expected to cease as soon as that 
relation is dissolved. In fact, the Greeks, 
since the admirable novel of " Anasta- 
sius " could have been a faithful picture 
of their manners, have undergone most 
important changes ; the flower of their 
youth, returning to their country from 
the universities of Italy, Germany, and 
France, have communicated to their fel- 
low-citizens the latest results of that social 
perfection of which their ancestors were 
the original source. The university of 
Chios contained before the breaking out 
of , the revolution eight hundred students, 
and among them several Germans and 
Americans. The munificence and energy 
of many of the Greek princes and mer- 
chants, directed to the renovation of 
their country with a spirit and a wisdom 
which has few examples, is above all 
praise. 

The English permit their own oppress- 
ors to act according to their natural sym- 
pathy with the Turkish tyrant, and to brand 



436 



HELLAS. 



upon their name the indelible blot of an 
alliance with the enemies of domestic hap- 
pmess, of Christianity and civilization. 

Russia desires to possess, not to liberate 
Greece ; and is contented to see the Turks, 
its natural enemies, and the Greeks, its 
mtended slaves, enfeeble each other until 
one or both fall into its net. The wise 
and generous policy of England would 
have consisted in establishing the inde- 
pendence of Greece, and in maintaining 
It both against Russia and the Turk; — 
but when was the oppressor generous' or 
just? 

The Spanish Peninsula is already free. 
France is tranquil in the enjoyment of a 
partial exemption from the abuses which 
its^ unnatural and feeble government are 
vainly attempting to revive. The seed of 
blood and misery has been sown in Italy, 
and a more vigorous race is arising to go 
forth to the harvest. The world waits ' 
only the news of a revolution of Germany 
to see the tyrants who have pinnacled 
themselves on its supineness precipitated 
mto the ruin from which they shall never 
arise. Well do these destroyers of man- 
kmd know their enemy, when they impute 
the msurrection in Greece to the same 
spirit before which they tremble through- 
out the rest of Europe, and that enemy 
well knows the power and the cunning of 
Its opponents, and watches the moment 
of their approaching weakness and inev- 
itable division to wrest the bloody scep- 
tres from their grasp. 



HELLAS. 



A LYRICAL DRAMA. 



DRAMATIS PERSONS. 

Mahmud. 

Hassan. 

Daood. 

Ahasuerus, a Jew. 
Chorus of Greek Captive Women. 
Messengers, Slaves, and Attendants. 
Scene, Constantinople. Time, Sunset. 



SCENE. — A Terrace on the 
Seraglio. 

Mahmud sleeping, an Indian Slave 
sitting beside his Couch. 

Chorus of Greek Captive Women. 
We strew these opiate fiowers 

On thy restless pillow,— 
They were stript from Orient bowers 
By the Indian billow. ' 

Be thy sleep 
Calm and deep, 
Like theirs who fell — not ours who 
weep ! 

Indian. 
Away, unlovely dreams ! 

Away, false shapes of sleep ! 
Be his, as Heaven seems, 
Clear, and bright, and deep ! 
Soft as love, and calm as death. 
Sweet as a summer night without a 
breath. 

Chorus. 
Sleep, sleep ! our song is laden 

With the soul of slumber; 
It was sung by a Samian maiden. 
Whose lover was of the number 
Who now keep 
That calm sleep 
Whence none may wake, where none 
shall weep. 

Indian. 
I touch thy temples pale ! 

I breathe my soul on thee ! 
And could my prayers avail. 
All my joy should be 
Dead, and I would live to weep, 
So thou might'st win one hour of quiet 
sleep. 

Chorus. 

Breathe low, low 

The spell of the mighty mistress now ! 

When Conscience lulls her sated snake, 

And Tyrants sleep, let Freedom wake. 

Breathe low — low 

The words which, like secret fire, shall 

flow 
Thro' the veins of the frozen earth — 
low, low ! 



HELLAS. 



437 



Semi chorus I. 

Life may change, but it may fly not; 
Hope may vanish, but can die not; 
Truth be veiled, but still it burneth; 
Love repulsed, — but it returneth ! 

Semichorus II. 

Yet were life a charnel where 
Hope lay coffined with Despair; 
Yet were truth a sacred lie, 
Love were lust — 

Semichorus I. 

If Liberty 
Lent not life its soul of light, 
Hope its iris of delight. 
Truth its prophet's robe to wear, 
Love its power to give and bear. 

Chorus. 

In the great morning of the world. 
The spirit of God with might unfurled 
The flag of Freedom over Chaos, 

And all its banded anarchs fled. 
Like vultures frighted from Imaus, 

Before an earthquake's tread. — 
So from Time's tempestuous dawn 
Freedom's splendor burst and shone: — 
Thermopylae and Marathon 
Caught, like mountains beacon-lighted, 

The springing Fire. — The winged 
glory 
On Philippi half-alighted. 

Like an eagle on a promontory. 
Its unwearied wings could fan 
The quenchless ashes of Milan. 
From age to age, from man to man, 

It lived; and lit from land to land 

Florence, Albion, Switzerland. 

Then night fell; and, as from night, 

Reassuming fiery flight, 

From the West swift Freedom came, 
Against the course of Heaven and 
doom, 

A second sun arrayed in flame, 
To burn, to kindle, to illume. 

From far Atlantis its young beams 

Chased the shadows and the dreams. 

France, with all her sanguine steams, 
Hid, but quencht it not; again 
Through clouds its shafts of glory rain 
From utmost Germany to Spain. 



As an eagle fed with morning 

Scorns the embattled tempests' warning, 

When she seeks her aerie hanging 

In the mountain-cedar's hair. 
And her brood expect the clanging 

Of her wings thro' the wild air, 
Sick with famine: — Freedom, so 

To what of Greece remaineth now 
Returns; her hoary ruins glow 
Like Orient mountains lost in day; 

Beneath the safety of her wings 
Her renovated nurslings prey, 

And in the naked lightnings 
Of truth they purge their dazzled eyes. 
Let Freedom leave — where'er she flies, 
A Desert, or a Paradise : 

Let the beautiful and the brave 

Share her glory, or a grave. 

Semichorus I. 
With the gifts of gladness 
Greece did thy cradle strew; 

Semichorus II. 

With the tears of sadness 

Greece did thy shroud bedew ! 

Semichorzts I. 

With an orphan's affection 

She followed thy bier thro' Time; 
Semichorus II. 

And at thy resurrection 

Reappeareth, like thou, sublime! 

Semichorus I. 

If Heaven should resume thee. 

To Heaven shall her spirit ascend; 

Semichorus II. 

If Hell should entomb thee. 

To Hell shall her high hearts bend. 

Semichorus I. 

If Annihilation — 

Semichorus II. 

Dust let her glories be ! 
And a name and a nation 

Be forgotten. Freedom, with thee ! 

Indian. 

His brow grows darker — breathe not — 

move not ! 
He starts — he shudders — ye that love 

not. 



438 



HELLAS. 



With your panting loud and fast, 
Have awakened him at last. 
Mahniiid ( startiui^ from his sleep). Man 

the Seraglio-guard ! make fast the 

gate. 
What ! from a cannonade of three short 

hours? 
'T is false ! that breach towards the Bos- 

phorus 
Cannot be practicable yet — who stirs ? 
Stand to the match; that when the foe 

prevails 
One spark may mix in reconciling ruin 
The conqueror and the conquered ! 

Heave the tower 
Into the gap — wrench off the roof. 

(^«/^r Hassan.) Ha! what! 

The truth of day lightens upon my dream 
And I am Mahmud still. 

Hassan. Your Sublime Highness 

Is strangely moved. 

Mahmud. The times do cast 

strange shadows 
On those who watch and who must rule 

their course, 
Lest they, being first in peril as in glory, 
Be whelmed in the fierce ebb : — and these 

are of them. 
Thrice has a gloomy vision hunted me 
As thus from sleep into the troubled day; 
It shakes me as the tempest shakes the 

sea, 
Leaving no figure upon memory's glass. 
Would that — no matter. Thou didst 

say thou knewest 
A Jew, whose spirit is a chronicle 
Of strange and secret and forgotten 

things. 
I bade thee summon him : — 't is said his 

tribe 
Dream, and are wise interpreters of 

dreams. 
Hassan. The Jew of whom I spake is 

old, — so old 
He seems to have outlived a world's de- 
cay; 
The hoary mountains and the wrinkled 

ocean 
Seem younger still than he; — his hair and 

beard 
Are whiter than the tempest-sifted snow; 
His cold pale limbs and pulseless arteries 
Are like the fibres of a cloud instinct 



With light, and to the soul that quickens 

them 
Are as the atoms of the mountain-drift 
To the winter-wind; — but from his eye 

looks forth 
A life of unconsumed thought which 

pierces 
The present, and the past, and the to- 
come. 
Some say that this is he whom the great 

prophet 
Jesus, the son of Joseph, for his mockery 
Mockt with the curse of immortality. 
Some feign that he is Enoch; others 

dream 
He was pre-adamite and has survived 
Cycles of generation and of ruin. 
The sage, in truth, by dreadful abstinence 
And conquering penance of the mutinous 

flesh. 
Deep contemplation, and unwearied study. 
In years outstretcht beyond the date of 

m.an, 
May have attained to sovereignty and 

science 
Over those strong and secret things and 

thoughts 
Which others fear and know not. 

Mahmud. I would talk 

With this old Jew. 

Hassan. Thy will is even now 

Made known to him, where he dwells in 

a sea-cavern 
Mid the Demonesi, less accessible 
Than thou or God ! He who would 

question him 
Must sail alone at sunset, where the 

stream 
Of Ocean sleeps around those foamless 

isles. 
When the young moon is westering as 

now, 
And evening airs wander upon the wave; 
And when the pines of that bee-pasturing 

isle, 
Green Erebinthus, quench the fiery 

shadow 
Of his gilt prow within the sapphire 

water, 
Then must the lonely helmsman cry aloud 
" Ahasuerus ! " and the caverns round 
Will answer ' ' Ahasuerus ! " If his prayer 
Be granted, a faint meteor will arise 



HELLAS. 



439 



Lighting him over Marmora, and a wind 
Will rush out of the sighing pine-forest, 
And with the wind a storm of harmony 
Unutterably sweet, and pilot him 
Thro' the soft twilight to the Bosphorus : 
Thence at the hour and place and circum- 
stance 
Fit for the matter of their conference 
The Jew appears. Few dare, and few 

who dare 
Win the desired communion — but that 

shout 
Bodes — \_A sJiout wit/mi. 

JMahniud. Evil, doubtless; like 

all human sounds. 
Let me converse with spirits. 

Hassan. That shout again. 

Alahniud. This Jew whom thou hast 

summoned — 
Hassan. Will be here — 

Maht7tud. When the omnipotent 

hour to which are yoked 
He, I, and all things shall compel — 

enough. 
Silence those mutineers — that drunken 

crew. 
That crowd about the pilot in the storm. 
Ay ! strike the foremost shorter by a 

head ! 
They weary me, and I have need of rest. 
Kings are like stars — they rise and set, 

they have 
The worship of the world, but no repose. 
[^Exeunt severally. 

Chorus. 

Worlds on worlds are rolling ever 
From creation to decay, 

Like the bubbles on a river 

Sparkling, bursting, borne away. 
But they are still immortal 
Who, thro' birth's Orient portal 

And death's dark chasm hurrying to 
and fro. 
Clothe their unceasing flight 
In the brief dust and light 

Gathered around their chariots as they 

go; 

New shapes they still may weave, 
New gods, new laws receive. 
Bright or dim are they as the robes they 
last 
On Death's bare ribs had cast. 



A power from the unknown God, 
A Promethean conqueror came; 
Like a triumphal path he trod 
The thorns of death and shame. 
A mortal shape to him 
Was like the vapor dim 
Which the Orient planet animates with 
light; 
Hell, Sin, and Slavery came, 
Like bloodhounds mild and tame, 
Nor preyed, until their Lord had taken 
flight; 
The moon of Mahomet 
Arose, and it shall set : 
While blazoned as on heaven's immortal 
noon 
The cross leads generations on. 

Swift as the radiant shapes of sleep 
From one whose dreams are Para- 
dise 
Fly, when the fond wretch wakes to 
weep, 
And day peers forth with her blank 

eyes; 
So fleet, so faint, so fair, 
The Powers of earth and air 
Fled from the folding star of Bethle- 
hem: 
Apollo, Pan, and Love, 
And even Olympian Jove 
Grew weak, for killing Truth had glared 
on them; 
Our hills and seas and streams 
Dispeopled of their dreams, 
Their wa-ters turned to blood, their dew 
to tears, 
Wailed for the golden years. 
Enter Mahmuet, Hassan, Daood, 

and others. 
Mahrmid. More gold? our ancestors 
bought gold with victory. 
And shall I sell it for defeat? 

Daood. The Janizars 

Clamor for pay. 

Mahinud. Go ! bid them pay 

themselves 
With Christian blood ! Are there no 

Grecian virgins 
Whose shrieks and spasms and tears they 

may enjoy? 
No infidel children to impale on spears? 
No hoary priests after that Patriarch 



440 



HELLAS. 



Who bent the curse against his country's 

heart, 
Which clove his own at last ? Go ! bid 

them kill; 
Blood is the seed of gold. 

Daood. It has been sown, 

A.nd jet the harvest to the sickle-men 
Is as a grain to each. 

Mahniud. Then, take this signet, 

Unlock the seventh chamber in which lie 
The treasures of victorious Solyman, — 
An empire's spoil stored for a day of 

ruin. 
O spirit of my sires ! is it not come ? 
The prey-birds and the wolves are gorged 

and sleep; 
But these, who spread their feast on the 

red earth, 
Hunger for gold, which fills not. — See 

them fed; 
Then, lead them to the rivers of fresh 
death. [i5"x// Daood. 

O miserable dawn, after a night 
More glorious than the day which it 

usurpt ! 
O faith in God ! O power on earth ! O 

word 
Of the great prophet, whose o'ershadow- 

ing wings 
Darkened the thrones and idols of the 

West, 
Now bright ! — For thy sake cursed be 

the hour. 
Even as a father by an evil child. 
When the Orient moon of Islam rolled 

in triumph 
From Caucasus to White Ceraunia ! 
Ruin above, and anarchy below; 
Terror without, and treachery within; 
The Chalice of destruction full, and all 
Thirsting to drink; and who among us 

dares 
To dash it from his lips? and where is 
Hope? 
Hassan. The lamp of our dominion 
still rides high; 
One God is God — Mahomet is his 

prophet. 
Four hundred thousand Moslems from 

the limits 
Of utmost Asia, irresistibly 
Throng, like full clouds at the Sirocco's 
cry; 



But not like them to weep their strength 

in tears: 
They bear destroying lightning, and their 

step 
Wakes earthquake to consume and over- 
whelm. 
And reign in ruin. Phrygian Olympus, 
Tmolus, and Latmos, and Mycale, 

roughen 
With horrent arms; and lofty ships even 

now. 
Like vapors anchored to a mountain's 

edge, 
Freighted with fire and whirlwind, wait 

at Scala 
The convoy of the ever-veering wind. 
Samos is drunk with blood; — the Greek 

has paid 
Brief victory with swift loss and long 

despair. 
The false Moldavian serfs fled fast and 

far, 
When the fierce shout of Allah-illa- 

Allah ! 
Rose like the war-cry of the northern 

wind 
Which kills the sluggish clouds, and 

leaves a fiock 
Of wild swans struggling with the naked 

storm. 
So were the lost Greeks on the Danube's 

day ! 
If night is mute, yet the returning sun 
Kindles the voices of the morning birds; 
Nor at thy bidding less exultingly 
Than birds rejoicing in the golden day, 
The Anarchies of Africa unleash 
Their tempest-winged cities of the sea. 
To speak in thunder to the rebel world. 
Like sulphurous clouds, half-shattered 

by the storm. 
They sweep the pale iEgean, while the 

Queen 
Of Ocean, bound upon her island-throne. 
Far in the West sits mourning, that her 

sons 
Who frown on Freedom spare a smile 

for thee : 
Russia still hovers, as an eagle might 
Within a cloud, near which a kite and 

crane 
Hang tangled in inextricable fight, 
To stoop upon the victor; — for she fears 



HELLAS. 



441 



The name of Freedom, even as she hates 

thine. 
But recreant Austria loves thee as the 

Grave 
Loves Pestilence, and her slow dogs of 

war 
Flesht with the chase, come up from 

Italy, 
And howl upon their limits; for they see 
The panther. Freedom, fled to her old 

cover, 
Amid seas and mountains, and a mightier 

brood 
Crouch round. What Anarch wears a 

crown or mitre, 
Or bears the sword, or grasps the key of 

gold, 
Whose friends are not thy friends, whose 

foes thy foes ? 
Our arsenals and our armories are full; 
Our forts defy assault; ten thousand can- 
non 
Lie ranged upon the beach, and hour by 

hour 
Their earth-convulsing wheels affright the 

city; 
The galloping of fiery steeds makes pale 
The Christian merchant; and the yellow 

Jew 
Hides his hoard deeper in the faithless 

earth. 
Like clouds, and like the shadows of the 

clouds, 
Over the hills of Anatolia, 
Swift in wide troops the Tartar chivalry 
Sweep; — the far-flashing of their starry 

lances 
Reverberates the dying light of day. 
We have one God, one King, one Hope, 

one Law; 
But many-headed Insurrection stands 
Divided in itself, and soon must fall. 
iMahmud. Proud words, when deeds 

come short, are seasonable; 
Look, Hassan, on yon crescent moon, em- 
blazoned 
Upon that shattered flag of fiery cloud 
Which leads the rear of the departing 

day; 
Wan emblem of an empire fading now ! 
See how it trembles in the blood-red air, 
And like a mighty lamp whose oil is 

spent 



Shrinks on the horizon's edge, while, 

from above. 
One star with insolent and victorious 

light 
Hovers above its fall, and with keen 

beams. 
Like arrows thro' a fainting antelope. 
Strikes its weak form to death. 

Hassan. Even as that moon 

Renews itself — 

A/ahmud. Shall we be not 

renewed ! 
Far other bark than ours were needed 

now 
To stem the torrent of descending time: 
The spirit that lifts the slave before his 

lord 
Stalks through the capitals of armed 

kings, 
And spreads his ensign in the wilderness: 
Exults in chains; and, when the rebel 

falls, 
Cries like the blood of Abel from the 

dust; 
And the inheritors of the earth, like 

beasts 
When earthquake is unleasht, with idiot 

fear 
Cower in their kingly dens — as I do now. 
What were Defeat when Victory must 

appal? 
Or Danger, when Security looks pale? — 
How said the messenger — who, from 

the fort 
Islanded in the Danube, saw the battle 
Of Bucharest? — that — 

Hassan. Ibrahim's scimitar 

Drew with its gleam swift victory from 

heaven. 
To burn before him in the night of bat- 
tle — 
A light and a destruction. 

Mahnnid. Ay! the day 

Was ours : but how ? — 

Hassan. The light Wallachians, 

The Arnaut, Servian, and Albanian allies 
Fled from the glance of our artillery 
Almost before the thunder-stone alit. 
One half the Grecian army made a bridge 
Of safe and slow retreat, with Moslem 

dead 
The other — 

Alahmud, Speak — tremble not. — ' 



442 



HELLAS. 



Hassan. Islanded 

By victor myriads, formed in hollow 

square 
With rough and steadfast front, and thrice 

flung back 
The deluge of our foaming cavalry; 
Thrice their keen wedge of battle pierced 

our lines. 
Our baffled army trembled like one man 
Before a host, and gave them space; but 

soon, 
From the surrounding hills, the batteries 

blazed, 
Kneading them down with fire and iron 

rain: 
Yet none approacht; till, like a field of 

corn 
Under the hook of the swart sickle-man. 
The band, intrencht in mounds of Turk- 
ish dead. 
Grew weak and few. — Then said the 

Pacha, " Slaves, 
Render yourselves — they have abandoned 

you — 
What hope of refuge, or retreat, or aid? 
We grant your lives." "Grant that 

which is thine own ! " 
Cried one, and fell upon his sword and 

died! 
Another — "God, and man, and hope 

abandon me; 
But I to them, and to myself, remain 
Constant : " — he bowed his head and his 

heart burst. 
A third exclaimed, "There is a refuge, 

tyrant, 
Where thou darest not pursue, and canst 

not harm, 
Should'st thou pursue; there we shall 

meet again." 
Then held his breath, and, after a brief 

spasm. 
The indignant spirit cast its mortal gar- 
ment 
Among the slain — dead earth upon the 

earth ! 
So these survivors, each by different ways. 
Some strange, all sudden, none dishon- 
orable. 
Met in triumphant death; and when our 

army 
Closed in, while yet wonder, and awe, 
and shame, 



Held back the base hyenas of the battle 
That feed upon the dead and fly the ! 

living, 
One rose out of the chaos of the slain: 
And if it were a corpse which some dread 

spirit 
Of the old saviors of the land we rule 
Had lifted in its anger wandering by; — 
Or if there burned within the dying man 
Unquenchable disdain of death, and 

faith 
Creating what it feigned; — I cannot 

tell — 
But he cried, " Phantoms of the free, we 

come ! 
Armies of the Eternal, ye who strike 
To dust the citadels of sanguine kings. 
And shake the souls throned on their 

stony hearts, 
And thaw their frost-work diadems like 

dew; — 
O ye who float around this clime, and 

weave 
The garment of the glory which it wears, 
Whose fame, tho' earth betray the dust 

it claspt, 
Lies sepulchred in monumental thought; 
Progenitors of all that yet is great. 
Ascribe to your bright senate, O accept 
In your high ministrations, us, your 

sons — 
Us first, and the more glorious yet to 

come ! 
And ye, weak conquerors ! giants who 

look pale 
When the crusht worm rebels beneath 

your tread. 
The vultures and the dogs, your pen- 
sioners tame. 
Are overgorged; but, like oppressors, still 
They crave the relic of Destruction's 

feast. 
The exhalations and the thirsty winds 
Are sick with blood; the dew is foul 

with death; 
Heaven's light is quencht in slaughter: 

thus, where'er 
Upon your camps, cities, or towers, or 

fleets. 
The obscene birds the reeking remnants 

cast 
Of these dead limbs, — upon your streams 
and mountains, 



HELLAS. 



443 



Upon your fields, your gardens, and your 

housetops. 
Where'er the winds shall creep, or the 

clouds fly. 
Or the dews fall, or the angry sun look 

down 
With poisoned light — Famine and Pesti- 
lence, 
And Panic, shall wage war upon our 

side ! 
Nature from all her boundaries is moved 
Against ye : Time has found ye light as 

foam. 
The Earth rebels; and Good and Evil 

stake 
Their empire o'er the unborn world of 

men 
On this one cast; — but ere the die be 

thrown. 
The renovated genius of our race, 
Proud umpire of the impious game, de- 
scends 
A seraph-winged Victory, bestriding 
The tempest of the Omnipotence of God, 
Which sweeps all things to their ap- 
pointed doom. 
And you to oblivion ! " — More he would 

have said. 
But — 

Mahviud. Died — as thou 

shouldst ere thy lips had painted 
Their ruin in the hues of our success, 
A rebel's crime gilt with a rebel's tongue ! 
Your heart is Greek, Hassan. 

Hassan. It may be so: 

A spirit not my own wrencht me within, 
And I have spoken words I fear and hate : 
Yet would I die for — 

Ma km lid. Live! oh live ! outlive 

Me and this sinking empire. But the 

fleet — 
Hassan. Alas ! — 
Alahmud. The fleet which, 

like a flock of clouds 
Chased by the wind, flies the insurgent 

banner. 
Our winged-castles from their merchant 

ships ! 
Our myriads before their weak pirate 

bands ! 
Our arms before their chains ! our years 

of empire 
Before their centuries of servile fear ! 



Death is awake ! Repulse is on the 

waters ! 
They own no more the thunder-bearing 

banner 
Of Mahmud; but, like hounds of abase 

breed. 
Gorge from a stranger's hand, and rend 

their master. 
Hassan. Latmos, and Ampelos, and 

Phanae, saw 
The wreck — 

Mahtniid. The caves of the 

Icarian isles 
Told each to the other in loud mockery. 
And with the tongue as of a thousand 

echoes, 
First of the sea-convulsing fight — and, 

then, — 
Thou darest to speak — senseless are the 

mountains : 
Interpret thou their voice ! 

Hassan. My presence bore 

A part in that day's shame. The Grecian 

fleet 
Bore down at daybreak from the North, 

and hung 
As multitudinous on the ocean line, 
As cranes upon the cloudless Thracian 

wind. 
Our squadron, convoying ten thousand 

men, 
Was stretching towards Nauplia when the 

battle 
Was kindled. — 

First thro' the hail of our artillery 
The agile Hydriote barks with press of 

sail 
Dasht : — ship to ship, cannon to cannon, 

man 
To man were grappled in the embrace of 

war. 
Inextricable but by death or victory. 
The tempest of the raging fight convulst 
To its crystalline depths that stainless sea, 
And shook Heaven's roof of golden morn- 
ing clouds. 
Poised on a hundred azure mountain 

isles. 
In the brief trances of the artillery 
One cry from the destroyed and the de- 
stroyer 
Rose, and a cloud of desolation wrapt 
The unforeseen event, till the north wind 



444 



HELLAS. 



Sprung from the sea, lifting the heavy 
veil 

Of battle-smoke — then victory — vic- 
tory ! 

For, as we thought, three frigates from 
Algiers 

Bore down from Naxos to our aid, but 
soon 

The abhorred cross glimmered behind, 
before, 

Among, around us; and that fatal sign 

Dried with its beams the strength in Mos- 
lem hearts, 

As the sun drinks the dew. — What more ? 
We fled ! — 

Our noonday path over the sanguine foam 

Was beaconed, — and the glare struck 
the sun pale, — 

By our consuming transports; the fierce 
light 

Made all the shadows of our sails blood- 
red. 

And every countenance blank. Some 
ships lay feeding 

The ravening fire, even to the water's 
level ; 

Some were blown up; some, settling 
heavily. 

Sunk; and the shrieks of our companions 
died 

Upon the wind, that bore us fast and far. 

Even after they were dead. Nine thou- 
sand perisht ! 

We met the vultures legioned in the air 

Stemming the torrent of the tainted wind; 

They, screaming from their cloudy moun- 
tain peaks, 

Stoopt thro' the sulphurous battle-smoke 
and percht 

Each on the weltering carcase that we 
loved, 

Like its ill angel or its damned soul 

Riding upon the bosom of the sea. 

We saw the dog-fish hastening to their 
feast. 

Joy waked the voiceless people of the sea. 

And ravening Famine left his ocean cave 

To dwell with War, with us, and with 
Despair. 

We met night three hours to the west of 
Patmos, 

And with night, tempest — 

Mahmud. Cease ! 



Enter a Messenger. 
Messenger. Your 

Sublime Highness, 

That Christian hound, the Muscovite Am- 
bassador 

Has left the city. — If the rebel fleet 

Had anchored in the port, had victory 

Crowned the Greek legions in the Hippo- 
drome, 

Panic were tamer. — Obedience and Mu- 
tiny, _ 

Like giants in contention planet-btruck, 

Stand gazing on each other. — There is 
peace 

In Stamboul. — 

Mah/mid. Is the grave not 

calmer still? 

Its ruins shall be mine. 

Hassan. Fear not the Russian: 

The tiger leagues not with the stag at bay 

Against the hunter, — Cunning, base, and 
cruel. 

He crouches, watching till the spoil be 
won, 

And must be paid for his reserve in blood. 

After the war is fought, yield the sleek 
Russian 

That which thou canst not keep, his de- 
served portion 

Of blood, which shall not flow thro' 
streets and fields. 

Rivers and seas, like that which we may 
win. 

But stagnate in the veins of Christian 
slaves ! 
Enter second Messenger. 
Second Alessenger. Nauplia, Tripo- 
lizza, Mothon, Athens, 

Navarin, Artas, Monembasia, 

Corinth, and Thebes are carried by 
assault. 

And every Islamite who made his dogs 

Fat with the flesh of Galilean slaves 

Past at the edge of the sword : the lust 
of blood 

Which made our warriors drunk is 
quencht in death; 

But like a fiery plague breaks out anew 

In deeds which make the Christian cause 
look pale 

In its own light. The garrison of Patras 

Has store but for ten days, nor is there 
hope 



HELLAS. 



445 



But from the Briton : at once slave and 

tyrant 
His wishes still are weaker than his 

fears, 
Or he would sell what faith may yet re- 
main 
From the oaths broke in Genoa and in 

Norway; 
And if you buy him not, your treasury 
Is empty even of promises — his own 

coin. 
The freedman of a western poet chief 
Holds Attica with seven thousand rebels, 
And has beat back the Pacha of Negro- 

pont : 
The ag^d Ali sits in Yanina 
A crownless metaphor of empire : 
His name, that shadow of his withered 

might, 
Holds our besieging army like a spell 
In prey to famine, pest, and mutiny; 
He, bastioned in his citadel, looks forth 
Joyless upon the sapphire lake that 

mirrors 
The ruins of the city where he reigned 
Childless and sceptreless. The Greek 

has reapt 
The costly harvest his own blood 

matured. 
Not the sower, Ali — who has bought a 

truce 
From Ypsilanti with ten camel loads 
Of Indian gold. 

Enter a third Messenger. 
Mahmud. What more? 

Third Messenger. The Christian tribes 
Of Lebanon and the Syrian wilderness 
Are in revolt; — Damascus, Hems, 

Aleppo 
Tremble; — the Arab menaces Medina, 
The Ethiop has intrencht himself in 

Sennaar, 
And keeps the Egyptian rebel well em- 
ployed, 
tVho denies homage, claims investiture 
As price of tardy aid. Persia demands 
The cities on the Tigris, and the Georgians 
Refuse their living tribute. Crete and 

Cyprus, 
Like mountain-twins that from each 

other's veins 
Catch the volcano-fire and earthquake 

spasm, 



Shake in the general fever. Thro' the 

city. 
Like birds before a storm, the Santons 

shriek. 
And prophesyings horrible and new 
Are heard among the crowd: that sea 

of men 
Sleeps on the wrecks it made, breathless 

and still. 
A Dervise, learned in the Koran, preaches 
That it is written how the sins of Islam 
Must raise up a destroyer even now. 
The Greeks expect a Saviour from the 

west. 
Who shall not come, men say, in clouds 

and glory. 
But in the omnipresence of that spirit 
In which all live and are. Ominous 

signs 
Are blazoned broadly on the noonday 

sky : 
One saw a red cross stampt upon the 

sun; 
It has rained blood; and monstrous births 

declare 
The secret wrath of Nature and her 

Lord. 
The army encampt upon the Cydaris, 
Was roused last night by the alarm of 

battle, 
And saw two hosts conflicting in the 

air. 
The shadows doubtless of the unborn 

time 
Cast on the mirror of the night. While 

yet 
The fight hung balanced, there arose a 

storm 
Which swept the phantoms from among 

the stars. 
At the third watch the spirit of the 

plague 
Was heard abroad flapping among the 

tents; 
Those who relieved watch found the 

sentinels dead. 
The last news from the camp is, that a 

thousand 
Have sickened, and — 

Enter a fourth Messenger. 
Mahmud. And thou, pale 

ghost, dim shadow 
Of some untimely rumor, speak ! 



446 



HELLAS. 



Fourth Messenger. One comes 

Fainting with toil, covered with foam 

and blood : 
He stood, he says, upon Chelonites' 
Promontory, which overlooks the isles 

that groan 
Under the Briton's frown, and all their 

waters 
Then trembling in the splendor of the 

moon. 
When, as the wandering clouds unveiled 

or hid 
Her boundless light, he saw two adverse 

fleets 
Stalk through the night in the horizon's 

glimmer, 
Mingling fierce thunders and sulphure- 
ous gleams, 
And smoke which strangled every infant 

wind 
That soothed the silver clouds thro' the 

deep air. 
At length the battle slept, but the 

Sirocco 
Awoke, and drove his flock of thunder- 
clouds 
Over the sea-horizon, blotting out 
All objects — save that in the faint 

moon-glimpse 
He saw, or dreamed he saw, the Turkish 

admiral 
And two the loftiest of our ships of war, 
With the bright image of that Queen of 

Heaven 
Who hid, perhaps, her face for grief, 

reverst; 
And the abhorred cross — 

Enter an Attendant. 
Attendant. Your Sublime High- 

ness, 
The Jew, who — 

Mahmud. Could not come 

more seasonably: 
Bid him attend. I '11 hear no more ! 

too long 
We gaze on danger thro' the mist of 

fear. 
And multiply upon our shattered hopes 
The images of ruin. Come what will ! 
To-morrow and to-morrow are as lamps 
Set in our path to light us to the edge 
Thro' rough and smooth, nor can we 
suffer aught 



Which he inflicts not in whose hand we 
are. [Exeunt. 

Semichorus L. 

Would I were the winged cloud 
Of a tempest swift and loud ! 
I would scorn 
The smile of morn 
And the wave where the moonrise is 
born ! 
I would leave 
The spirits of eve 
A shroud for the corpse of the day to 
weave 
From other threads than mine ! 
Bask in the deep blue noon divine 
Who would? Not I. 

Semichorus LL. 
Whither to fly? 

Semichorus L. 

Where the rocks that gird the iEgean 
Echo to the battle psean 
Of the free — 
I would flee 
A tempestuous herald of victory ! 
My golden rain 
For the Grecian slain 
Should mingle in tears with the bloody 
main. 
And my solemn thunder-knell 
Should ring to the wxjrld the passing 
bell 
Of tyranny. 

Semichorus II. 

Ah king ! wilt thou chain 
The rack and the rain? 
Wilt thou fetter the lightning and hurri- 
cane? 
The storms are free, 
But we — 

Chorus. 

O Slavery ! thou frost of the world's 
prime, 
Killing its flowers and leaving its thorns 
bare ! 
Thy touch has stampt these limbs with 
crime. 
These brows thy branding garland 
bear. 



HELLAS. 



447 



But the free heart, the impassive soul 
Scorn thy control ! 

Semichorus I. 

Let there be light ! said Liberty, 
And like sunrise from the sea, 
Athens arose ! — Around her born, 
Shone like mountains in the morn 
Glorious states; — and are they now 
Ashes, wrecks, oblivion? 

Semichorus II. 

Go, 
"Where Thermge and Asopus swallowed 

Persia, as the sand does foam, 
Deluge upon deluge followed, 

Discord, Macedon, and Rome: 
And lastly thou ! 

Semichorus I. 



Temples and towers, 

Citadels and marts, and they 
Who live and die there, have been ours. 

And may be thine, and must decay; 
But Greece and her foundations are 
Built below the tide of war, 
Based on the crystalline sea 
Of thought and its eternity; 
Her citizens, imperial spirits. 

Rule the present from the past, 
On all this world of men inherits 

Their seal is s'et. 

Semichorus II. 

Hear ye the blast. 
Whose Orphic thunder thrilling calls 
From ruin her Titanian walls? 

Whose spirit shakes the sapless bones 
Of Slavery ! Argos, Corinth, Crete 

Hear, and from their mountain thrones 
The daemons and the nymphs repeat 

The harmony. 

Se7?iichorus I. 

I hear ! I hear ! 

Semichoriis II. 
The world's eyeless charioteer, 
Destiny, is hurrying by ! 
What faith is crusht, what empire bleeds 
Beneath her earthquake-footed steeds? 



What eagle-winged victory sits 
At her right hand? what shadow flits 
Before? what splendor rolls behind? 
Ruin and renovation cry 
Who but We? 

Semichorus I. 

I hear ! I hear ! 
The hiss as of a rushing wind, 
The roar as of an ocean foaming, 
The thunder as of earthquake coming. 

I hear ! I hear ! 
The crash as of an empire faUing, 
The shrieks as of a people calling 
Mercy ! mercy ! — How they thrill ! 
Then a shout of " kill ! kill ! kill ! " 
And then a small still voice, thus — 

Semichorus II. 

Fear, 
Revenge and Wrong bring forth their 
kind. 
The foul cubs like their parents are, 
Their den is in the guilty mind. 

And Conscience feeds them with de- 
spair. 

Semichorus I. 

In sacred Athens, near the fane 

Of Wisdom, Pity's altar stood : 
Serve not the unknown God in vain, 
But pay that broken shrine again, 
Love for hate and tears for blood. 

Enter Mahmud ^7«^/ Ahasuerus. 
Mahmud. Thou art a man, thou 

say est, even as we. 
Ahasuerus. No more ! 
Mahmud. But raised above 

thy fellow-men 
By thought, as I by power. 

Ahasuerus. Thou sayest so. 

Mahmud. Thou art an adept in the 
difficult lore 
Of Greek and Frank philosophy; thou 

numberest 
The flowers and thou measurest the stars; 
Thou severest element from element; 
Thy spirit is present in the past, and sees 
The birth of this old world thro' all its 

cycles 
Of desolation and of loveliness. 
And when man was not, and how man 
became 



448 



HELLAS. 



The monarch and the slave of this low 

sphere, 
And all its narrow circles — it is much — 
I honor thee, and would be what thou art 
Were I not what I am; but the unborn 

hour, 
Cradled in fear and hope, conflicting 

storms. 
Who shall unveil? Nor thou, nor I, nor 

any 
Mighty or wise. I apprehended not 
What thou hast taught me, but I now 

perceive 
That thou art no interpreter of dreams; 
Thou dost not own that art, device, or 

God, 
Can make the future present — let it 

come ! 
Moreover thou disdainest us and ours; 
Thou art as God, whom thou contem- 

platest. 
Ahasuerus. Disdain thee ? — not the 

worm beneath my feet ! 
The Fathomless has care for meaner 

things 
Than thou canst dream, and has made 

pride for those 
Who would be what they may not, or 

would seem 
That which they are not. Sultan ! talk 

no more 
Of thee and me, the future and the 

past; 
But look on that which cannot change — 

the One, 
The unborn and the undying. Earth and 

ocean, 
Space, and the isles of life or light that 

gem 
The sapphire floods of interstellar air. 
This firmament pavilioned upon chaos, 
With all its cressets of immortal fire, 
Whose outwall, bastioned impregnably 
Against the escape of boldest thoughts, 

repels them 
As Calpe the Atlantic clouds — this Whole 
Of suns, and worlds, and men, and 

beasts, and flowers. 
With all the silent or tempestuous work- 
ings 
By which they have been, are, or cease 

to be, 
Is but a vision; — all that it inherits 



Are motes of a sick eye, bubbles and 

dreams; 
Thought is its cradle and its grave, noi 

less 
The future and the past are idle shadows 
Of thought's eternal flight — they have no 

being : 
Naught is but that which feels itself to be. 
iMahmud. What meanest thou? Thy 

words stream like a tempest 
Of dazzling mist within my brain — they 

shake 
The earth on which I stand, and hang 

like night 
On Heaven above me. What can they 

avail ? 
They cast on all things surest, brightest, 

best. 
Doubt, insecurity, astonishment. 

Ahasuerus. Mistake me not ! All is 

contained in each. 
Dodona's forest to an acorn's cup 
Is that which has been, or will be, to 

that 
Which is — ■ the absent to the present 

Thought 
Alone, and its quick elements, Will, 

Passion, 
Reason, Imagination, cannot die; 
They are, what that which they regard 

appears, 
The stuff whence mutability can weave 
All that it hath dominion o'er, worlds, 

worms. 
Empires, and superstitions. What has 

thought 
To do with time, or place, or circum- 
stance ? 
Wouldst thou behold the future? — ask 

and have ! 
Knock and it shall be opened — look 

and, lo ! 
The coming age is shadowed on the past 
As on a glass. 

iMahmud. Wild, wilder thoughts 

convulse 
My spirit — Did not Mahomet the 

Second 
Win Stamboul? 

Ahasuerus. Thou wouldst ask 

that giant spirit 
The written fortunes of thy house and 

faith. 



HELLAS. 



449 



Thou wouldst cite one out of the grave 

to tell 
How what was born in blood must die. 

Mahnnid. Thy words 

Have power on me ! I see — 

Ahasuerus. What hearest thou? 

Mahmud. A far whisper — 
Terrible silence. 

Ahasuerus. What succeeds? 
Mahmud. The sound 

As of the assault of an imperial city, 
The hiss of inextinguishable fire, 
The roar of giant cannon; the earth- 
quaking 
Fall of vast bastions and precipitous 

towers. 
The shock of crags shot from strange 

enginery, 
The clash of wheels, and clang of armed 

hoofs. 
And crash of brazen mail as of the 

wreck 
Of adamantine mountains — the mad 

blast 
Of trumpets, and the neigh of raging 

steeds, 
And shrieks of women whose thrill jars 

the blood, 
And one sweet laugh, most horrible to 

hear. 
As of a joyous infant waked and playing 
With its dead mother's breast, and now 

more loud 
The mingled battle-cry, — ha '..hear I 

not 



Ev roisTiii vtKrj. 



Allah-illah- Allah ! " 



Ahasuerus. The sulphurous mist is 

raised — thou seest — 
Mahmud. A chasm, 

As of two mountains in the wall of Stam- 

boul; 
And in that ghastly breach the Islamites, 
Like giants on the ruins of a world. 
Stand in the light of sunrise. In the 

dust 
Glimmers a kingless diadem, and one 
Of regal port has cast himself beneath 
The stream of war. Another proudly 

clad 
In golden arms spurs a Tartarian barb 
Into the gap, and with his iron mace 
Directs the torrent of that tide of men, 
And seems — he is — Mahomet ! 



Ahasuertis. What thou seest 

Is but the ghost of thy forgotten dream. 
A dream itself, yet less, perhaps, than 

that 
Thou call'st reality. Thou mayst 

behold 
How cities, on which Empire sleeps 

enthroned. 
Bow their towered crests to mutability. 
Poised by the flood, e'en on the height 

thou boldest, 
Thou mayst now learn how the full tide 

of power 
Ebbs to its depths. — Inheritor of glory. 
Conceived in darkness, born in blood, 

and nourisht 
W4th tears and toil, thou seest the mortal 

throes 
Of that whose birth was but the same. 

The Past 
Now stands before thee like an Incarna- 
! tion 

Of the To-come; yet wouldst thou com- 
mune with 
That portion of thyself which was ere 

thou 
Didst start for this brief race whose 

crown is death, 
Dissolve with that strong faith and fer- 
vent passion 
Which called it from the uncreated deep. 
Yon cloud of war, with its tempestuous 

phantoms 
Of raging death; and draw with mighty 

will 
The imperial shade hither. 

\_Exit Ahasuerus. 
Mahmud. Approach ! 

Phantoffi. I come 

Thence whither thou must go ! The 

grave is fitter 
To take the living than give up the dead; 
Yet has thy faith prevailed, and I am 

here. 
The heavy fragments of the power which 

fell 
When I arose, like shapeless crags and 

clouds. 
Hang round my throne on the abyss, and 

voices 
Of strange lament soothe my supreme 

repose, 
Wailing for glory never to return. — 



4SO 



HELLAS. 



A later Empire nods in its decay: 
The autumn of a greener faith is come, 
And wolfish change, like winter, howls 
to strip 

The foliage in which Fame, the eagle, 

built 
Her aerie, while Dominion whelpt be- 
low. 

The storm is in its branches, and the frost 

Is on its leaves, and the blank deep ex- 
pects 

Oblivion on oblivion, spoil on spoil, 

Ruin on ruin: — Thou art slow, my son; 

The Anarchs of the world of darkness 
keep 

A throne for thee, round which thine 
empire lies 

Boundless and mute; and for thy subjects 
thou. 

Like us, shalt rule the ghosts of mur- 
dered life, 

The phantoms of the powers who rule 
thee now — 

Mutinous passions, and conflicting fears, 

And hopes that sate themselves on dust 
and die ! — 

Stript of their mortal strength, as thou 
of thine. 

Islam must fall, but we will reign to- 
gether 

Over its ruins in the world of death: — 

And if the trunk be dry, yet shall the 
seed 

Unfold itself even in the shape of that 

Which gathers birth in its decay. Wo ! 
wo ! 

To the weak people tangled in the grasp 

Of its last spasms. 

Mahmud. Spirit, wo to all ! 

Wo to the wronged and the avenger ! 
Wo 

To the destroyer, wo to the destroyed ! 

Wo to the dupe, and wo to the de- 
ceiver ! 

Wo to the opprest, and wo to the 
oppressor ! 

Wo both to those that suffer and inflict; 

Those who are born and those who die ! 
But say, 

Imperial shadow of the thing I am, 

When, how, by whom. Destruction must 
accomplish 

Her consummation? 



Phantom. Ask the cold pale Hour, 
Rich in reversion of impending death. 
When h,; shall fall upon whose ripe gray 

hairs 
Sit Care, and Sorrow, and Infirmity — 
The weight which Crime, whose wings 

are plumed with years, 
Leaves in his flight from ravaged heart 

to heart 
Over the heads of men, under which 

burden 
They bow themselves unto the grave: 

fond wretch ! 
He leans upon his crutch, and talks of 

years 
To come, and how in hours of youth re- 
newed 
He will renew lost joys, and — 

Voice zvithoiit. Victory ! Victory ! 
[ 77/1? Phantom vanishes. 
Mahmud. What sound of the impor- 
tunate earth has broken 
My mighty trance ? 

Voice zvithont. Victory ! Victory ! 
Mah7ntid. Weak lightning before 
darkness ! poor faint smile 
Of dying Islam ! Voice which art the 

response 
Of hollow weakness ! Do I wake and 

live ? 
Were there such things, or may the un- 
quiet brain, 
Vext by the wise mad talk of the old 

Jew, 
Have shaped itself these shadows of its 

fear? 
It matters not ! — for naught we see or 

dream. 
Possess, or lose, or grasp at, can be 

worth 
More than it gives or teaches. Come 

what may, 
The future must become the past, and I 
As they were to whom once this present 

hour, 
This gloomy crag of time to which I 

cling, 
Seemed an Elysian isle of peace and joy 
Never to be attained. — I must rebuke 
This drunkenness of triumph ere it die, 
And dying, bring despair. Victory ! 
poor slaves ! 

\^Exit Mahmud. 



HELLAS. 



451 



Voice zvithont. Shout in the jubilee 

of death ! The Greeks 
Are as a brood of lions in the net 
Round which the kingly hunters of the 

earth 
Stand smiling. Anarchs, ye whose daily 

food 
Are curses, groans, and gold, the fruit of 

death 
From Thule to the girdle of the world, 
Come, feast ! the board groans with the 

flesh of men; 
The cup is foaming with a nation's 

blood, 
Famine and Thirst await ! eat, drink, 

and die ! 

Seniichortis I. 

Victorious Wrong, with vulture scream, 
Salutes the risen sun, pursues the flying 

day ! 
I saw her, ghastly as a tyrant's dream. 
Perch on the trembling pyramid of night. 
Beneath which earth and all her realms 

pavilioned lay 
In visions of the dawning undelight. 

Who shall impede her flight? 

Who rob her of her prey? 
Voice withotit. Victory ! Victory ! 

Russia's famisht eagles 
Dare not to prey beneath the crescent's 

light. 
Impale the remnant of the Greeks ! 

despoil ! 
Violate ! make their flesh cheaper than 

dust! 

Semichorus LI. 

Thou voice which art 
The herald of the ill in splendor hid ! 

Thou echo of the hollow heart 
Of monarchy, bear me to thine abode 
When desolation flashes o'er a world 
destroyed : 
Oh, bear me to those isles of jagged 
cloud 
Which float like mountains on the 
earthquake, mid 
The momentary oceans of the lightning, 
Or to some toppling promontory proud 
Of solid tempest whose black pyramid, 
Riven, overhangs the founts intensely 
brightning 



Of those dawn-tinted deluges of fire 
Before their waves expire. 
When heaven and earth are light, and 

only light 
In the thunder night ! 

Voice unthout. Victory ! Victory ! 

Austria, Russia, England, 
And that tame serpent, that poor shadow, 

France, 
Cry peace, and that means death when 

monarchs speak. 
Ho, there ! bring torches, sharpen those 

red stakes. 
These chains are light, fitter for slaves 

and poisoners 
Than Greeks. Kill ! plunder ! burn ! 

let none remain. 

Semichorus L. 

Alas ! for Liberty ! 
If numbers, wealth, or unfulfilling years, 
Or fate, can quell the free ! 
Alas ! for Virtue, when 
Torments, or contumely, or the sneers 

Of erring judging men 
Can break the heart where it abides. 
Alas ! if Love, whose smile makes this 
obscure world splendid, 
Can change with its false times and 
tides. 
Like hope and terror, — 
Alas for Love ! 
And Truth, who wanderest lone and 

unbefriended, 
If thou canst veil thy lie-consuming 
mirror 
Before the dazzled eyes of Error, 
Alas for thee ! Image of the Above. 

Semichorus IL. 
Repulse, with plumes from con- 
quest torn. 
Led the ten thousand from the limits of 
the morn 
Thro' many an hostile Anarchy ! 
At length they wept aloud, and cried, 
"The Sea! the Sea! " 
Thro' exile, persecution, and 
despair, 
Rome was, and young Atlantis 

shall become 
The wonder, or the terror, or the 
tomb 



452 



HELLAS. 



Of all whose step wakes Power lulled in 
her savage lair : 
But Greece was as a hermit child, 
Whose fairest thoughts and limbs 
were built 
To woman's growth, by dreams so mild, 
She knew not pain or guilt; 
And now, O Victory, blush ! and Empire 
tremble 
When ye desert the free — 
If Greece must l)e 
A wreck, yet shall its fragments re- 
assemble, 
And build themselves again impregnably 

In a diviner clime, 
To Amphionic music on some Cape sub- 
lime, 
Which frowns above the idle foam of 
Time. 

Semichorus I. 

Let the tyrants rule the desert they have 
made; 
Let the free possess the paradise they 
claim; 
Be the fortune of our fierce oppressors 
weighed 
With our ruin, our resistance, and 
our name ! 

Semichorus LL. 

Our dead shall be the seed of their | 
decay, 
Our survivors be the shadow of their 
pride, 
Our adversity a dream to pass away — 
Their dishonor a remembrance to 

abide ! 
Voice without. Victory ! Victory ! 
The bought Briton sends 
The keys of ocean to the Islamite. — 
Now shall the blazon of the cross be 

veiled, 
And British skill directing Othman might. 
Thunder-strike rebel victory. Oh, keep 

holy 
This jubilee of unrevenged blood ! 
Kill ! crush ! despoil ! Let not a Greek 
escape ! 

Semichorus L. 
Darkness has dawned in the East 
On the noon of time : 



The death-birds descend to their feast, 
From the hungry clime. 

Let Freedom and Peace flee far 
To a sunnier strand, 

And follow Love's folding star 
To the Evening land ! 

Semichorus LI, 

The young moon has fed 
Her exhausted horn. 
With the sunset's fire: 
The weak day is dead, 
But the night is not born; 
And, like loveliness panting with wild de- 
sire 
While it trembles with fear and delight, 
Hesperus flies from awakening night. 
And pants in its beauty and speed with 
light 
Fast flashing, soft, and bright. 
Thou beacon of love ! thou lamp of the 
free ! 
Guide us far, far away, 
To climes where now veiled by the ardor 
of day 
Thou art hidden 
From waves on which weary Noon, 
Faints in her summer swoon, 
Between kingless continents sinless 

as Eden, 
Around mountains and islands in- 
violably 
Prankt on the sapphire sea. 

Semichorus L. 

Thro' the sunset of hope, 
Like the shapes of a dream. 
What Paradise islands of glory 
gleam ! 
Beneath Heaven's cope. 
Their shadows more clear float by — 
The sound of their oceans, the light 

of their sky, 
The music and fragrance their soli- 
tudes breathe 
Burst, like morning on dream, or like 
Heaven on death 
Thro' the walls of our prison; 
And Greece, which was dead, is arisen ! 

Chorus. 

The world's great age begins anew, 
The golden years return. 



NOTES TO HELLAS. 



453 



The earth doth like a snake renew 

Her winter weeds outworn : 
Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires 

gleam, 
Like wrecks of a dissolving dream. 

A brighter Hellas rears its mountains 

From waves serener far; 
A new Peneus rolls his fountains 

Against the morning star. 
Where fairer Tempes bloom, there 

sleep 
Young Cyclads on a sunnier deep. 

A loftier Argo cleaves the main. 
Fraught with a later prize; 

Another Orpheus sings again, 
And loves, and weeps, and dies. 

A new Ulysses leaves once more 

Calypso for his native shore. 

Oh, write no more the tale of Troy, 
If earth Death's scroll must be ! 

Nor mix with Laian rage the joy 
Which dawns upon the free: 

Altho' a subtler Sphinx renew 

Riddles of death Thebes never knew. 



Another Athens shall arise, 

And to remoter time 
Bequeath, like sunset to the skies, 

The splendor of its prime; 
And leave, if naught so bright may live, 
All earth can take or Heaven can give. 



Saturn and Love their long repose 
Shall burst, more bright and good 

Than all who fell, than One who rose, 
Than many unsubdued : 

Not gold, not blood, their altar 
dowers. 

But votive tears and symbol flowers. 

Oh, cease ! must hate and death return? 

Cease ! must men kill and die? 
Cease ! drain not to its dregs the urn 

Of bitter prophecy. 
The world is weary of the past, 
Oh, might it die or rest at last ! 



NOTES. 

( I ) The quenchless ashes of Milan [ p . 43 7 ] . 

Milan was the centre of the resistance 
of the Lombard league against the Aus- 
trian tyrant. Frederic Barbarossa burnt 
the city to the ground, but liberty lived 
in its ashes, and it rose like an exhalation 
from its ruin. See Sismondi's " Histoire 
des Republiques Italiennes," a book 
which has done much towards awakening 
the Italians to an imitation of their great 
ancestors. 

(2) The Chorus [p. 437]. 

The popular notions of Christianity are 
represented in this chorus as true in their 
relation to the worship they superseded, 
and that which in all probability they will 
supersede, without considering their merits 
in a relation more universal. The first 
stanza contrasts the immortality of the 
living and thinking beings which inhabit 
the planets, and to use a common and 
inadequate phrase, clothe themselves in 
matter, with the transience of the noblest 
manifestations of the external world. 

The concluding verses indicate a pro- 
gressive state of more or less exalted 
existence, according to the degree of 
perfection which every distinct intelli- 
gence may have attained. Let it not be 
supposed that I mean to dogmatize upon 
a subject, concerning which all men are 
equally ignorant, or that I think the Gor- 
dian knot of the origin of evil can be 
disentangled by that or any similar asser- 
tions. The received hypothesis of a 
Being resembling men in the moral attri- 
butes of his nature, having called us out 
of non-existence, and after inflicting on 
us the misery of the commission of error, 
should superadd that of the punishment 
and the privations consequent upon it, 
still would remain inexplicable and in- 
credible. That there is a true solution 
of the riddle, and that in our present 
state that solution is unattainable by us, 
are propositions which may be regarded 
as equally certain : meanwhile, as it is the 
province of the poet to attach himself to 



454 



NOTES TO HELLAS. 



those ideas which exalt and ennoble hu- 
manity, let him be permitted to have con- 
jectured the condition of that futurity 
towards which we are all impelled by an 
inextinguishable thirst for immortality. 
Until better arguments can be produced 
than sophisms which disgrace the cause, 
this desire itself must remain the strong- 
est and the only presumption that eternity 
is the inheritance of every thinking being. 

(3) No hoary priests after that patriarch 

[P- 439]. 

The Greek Patriarch after having been 
compelled to fulminate an anathema 
against the insurgents was put to death 
by the Turks. 

Fortunately the Greeks have been 
taught that they cannot buy security by 
degradation, and the Turks, though equally 
cruel, are less cunning than the smooth- 
faced tyrants of Europe. As to the an- 
athema, his Holiness might as well have 
thrown his mitre at Mount Athos for any 
effect that it produced. The chiefs of 
the Greeks are almost all men of com- 
prehension and enlightened views on re- 
ligion and politics. 

(4) The freedinan of a western poet chief 

[P- 445]- 
A Greek who had been Lord Byron's 
servant commands the insurgents in At- 
tica. This Greek, Lord Byron informs 
me, though a poet and an enthusiastic 
patriot, gave him rather the idea of a 
timid and unenterprising person. It ap- 
pears that circumstances make men what 
they are, and that we all contain the 
germ of a degree of degradation or of 
greatness whose connection with our 
character is determined by events. 

(5) The Greeks expect a Saviour from 

the tvest [p. 445]. 

It is reported that this Messiah had 
arrived at a seaport near Lacedremon in 
an American brig. The association of 
names and ideas is irresistibly ludicrous, 
but the prevalence of such a rumor 
strongly marks the state of popular en- 
thusiasm in Greece. 



(6) The sound as of the assault of an 
Imperial city [p. 449]. 

For the vision of Mahmud of the taking 
of Constantinople in 1453, see Gibbon's 
"Decline and Fall of the Roman Em- 
pire," vol. xii. p. 223. 

The manner of the invocation of the 
spirit of Mahomet the Second will be 
censured as over subtle. I could easily 
have made the Jew a regular conjurer, and 
the Phantom an ordinary ghost. I have 
preferred to represent the Jew as dis- 
claiming all pretension, or even belief, in 
supernatural agency, and as tempting 
Mahmud to that state of mind in which 
ideas may be supposed to assume the 
force of sensations through the confusion 
of thought with the objects of thought, 
and the excess of passion animating the 
creations of imagination. 

It is a sort of natural magic, suscepti- 
ble of being exercised in a degree by any 
one who should have made himself mas- 
ter of the secret associations of another's 
thoughts. 

(7) The Chorus [p. 452]. 

The final chorus is indistinct and oh' 
scure, as the event of the living drama 
whose arrival it foretells. Prophecies 
of wars, and rumors of wars, etc., may 
safely be made by poet or prophet in any 
age, but to anticipate however darkly a 
period of regeneration and happiness is 
a more hazardous exercise of the faculty 
which bards possess or feign. It will 
remind the reader " magno Jtec proxim 
intervallo " of Isaiah and Virgil, whose 
ardent spirits overleaping the actual reign 
of evil which we endure and bewail, 
already saw the possible and perhaps ap- 
proaching state of society in which the 
" lion shall lie doivn ivith the lamb,'''' and 
" omnis feret omnia tellus." Let these 
great names be my authority and my 
excuse. 

(8) Saturn and Love their long repose 
shall burst [p. 453]. 

Saturn and Love were among the dei- 
ties of a real or imaginary state of inno- 



NOTES TO HELLAS. 



455 



cence and happiness. All those zvho fell, 
or the Gods of Greece, Asia, and Egypt; 
the One ivho 7'ose, or Jesus Christ, at whose 
appearance the idols of the Pagan World 
were amerced of their worship; and the 
many iinsnbdued, or the monstrous ob- 
jects of the idolatry of China, India, the 
Antarctic islands, and the native tribes of 
America, certainly have reigned over the 
understandings of men in conjunction or 
in succession, during periods in which all 
we know of evil has been in a state of 
portentous, and, until the revival of learn- 
ing and the arts, perpetually increasing 
activity. The Grecian gods seem indeed 
to have been personally more innocent, 
although it cannot be said, that as far as 
temperance and chastity are concerned, 
they gave so edifying an example as their 
successor. The sublime human charac- 
ter of Jesus Christ was deformed by an 
imputed identification with a power, who 
tempted, betrayed, and punished the in- 
nocent beings who were called into exist- 
ence by his sole will; and for the period 
of a thousand years, the spirit of this 
most just, wise, and benevolent of men, 
has been propitiated with myriads of 
hecatombs of those who approached the 
I nearest to his innocence and wisdom, 
sacrificed under every aggravation of 
atrocity and variety of torture. The 
horrors of the Mexican, the Peruvian, 
and the Indian superstitions are well 
known. 



NOTE ON HELLAS, BY MRS. 
SHELLEY. 

The South of Europe was in a state of 
great political excitement at the begin- 
ning of the year 1821. The Spanish 
Revolution had been a signal to Italy; 
secret societies w"ere formed; and, when 
Naples rose to declare the Constitution, 
the call was responded to from Brundu- 
sium to the foot of the Alps. To crush 
these attempts to obtain liberty, early in 
1 82 1 the Austrians poured their armies 
into the Peninsula: at first their coming 
rather seemed to add energy and resolu- 
tion to a people long enslaved. The Pied- 



montese asserted their freedom; Genoa 
threw off the yoke of the King of Sar- 
dinia; and, as if in playful imitation, the 
people of the little state of Massa and 
Carrara gave the conge to their sovereign, 
and set up a republic. 

Tuscany alone was perfectly tranquil. 
It was said that the Austrian minister pre- 
sented a list of sixty Carbonari to the 
Grand Duke, urging their imprisonment; 
and the Grand Duke replied, "I do not 
know whether these sixty men are Car- 
bonari, but I know, if I imprison them, 
I shall directly have sixty thousand start 
up." But, though the Tuscans had no 
desire to disturb the paternal government 
beneath whose shelter they slumbered, 
they regarded the progress of the various 
Italian revolutions with intense interest, 
and hatred for the Austrian was warm in 
every bosom. But they had slender 
hopes; they knew that the Neapolitans 
would offer no fit resistance to the regu- 
lar German troops, and that the over- 
throw of the constitution in Naples would 
act as a decisive blow against all struggles 
for liberty in Italy. 

We have seen the rise and progress of 
reform. But the Holy Alliance was alive 
and active in those days, and few could 
dream of the peaceful triumph of liberty. 
It seemed then that the armed assertion 
of freedom in the South of Europe was 
the only hope of the liberals, as, if it pre- 
vailed, the nations of the north would 
imitate the example. Happily the reverse 
has proved the fact. The countries ac- 
customed to the exercise of the privileges 
of freemen, to a limited extent, have 
extended, and are extending, these limits. 
Freedom and knowledge have now a 
chance of proceeding hand in hand; and, 
if it continue thus, we may hope for the 
durability of both. Then, as I have said 
— in 1821 — Shelley, as well as every 
other lover of liberty, looked upon the 
struggles in Spain and Italy as decisive 
of the destinies of the world, probably 
for centuries to come. The interest he 
took in the progress of affairs was intense. 
When Genoa declared itself free, his 
hopes were at their highest. Day after 
day he read the bulletins of the Austrian 



456 



FRAGMENTS OF AN UNFINISHED DRAMA. 



army, and sought eagerly to gather tokens 
of its defeat. He heard of the revolt of 
Genoa with emotions of transport. His 
whole heart and soul were in the triumph 
of the cause. We were living at Pisa at 
that time; and several well-informed 
Italians, at the head of whom we may 
place the celebrated Vacca, were accus- 
tomed to seek for sympathy in their hopes 
from Shelley : they did not find such for 
the despair they too generally experi- 
enced, founded on contempt for their 
southern countrymen. 

While the fate of the progress of the 
Austrian armies then invading Naples 
was yet in suspense, the news of another 
revolution filled him with exultation. We 
had formed the acquaintance at Pisa of 
several Constantinopolitan Greeks, of the 
family of Prince Caradja, formerly Hos- 
podar of Wallachia; who, hearing that 
the bowstring, the accustomed finale of 
his viceroyalty, was on the road to him, 
escaped with his treasures, and took up 
his abode in Tuscany. Among these was 
the gentleman to whom the drama of 
" Hellas " is dedicated. Prince Mavro- 
cordato was warmed by those aspirations 
for the independence of his country which 
filled the hearts of many of his country- 
men. He often intimated the possibility 
of an insurrection in Greece; but we had 
no idea of its being so near at hand, when, 
on the 1st of April, 1821, he called on 
Shelley, bringing the proclamation of his 
cousin. Prince Ypsilanti, and, radiant 
with exultation and delight, declared that 
henceforth Greece would be free. 

Shelley had hymned the dawn of liberty 
in Spain and Naples, in two odes dic- 
tated by the warmest enthusiasm; he felt 
himself naturally impelled to decorate 
with poetry the uprise of the descendants 
of that people whose works he regarded 
with deep admiration, and to adopt the 
vaticinatory character in prophesying their 
success. "Hellas" was written in a 
moment of enthusiasm. It is curious to 
remark how well he overcomes the diffi- 
culty of forming a drama out of such scant 
materials. His prophecies, indeed, came 
true in their general, not their particular, 
purport. He did not foresee the death 



of Lord Londonderry, which was to be 
the epoch of a change in English politics, 
particularly as regarded foreign affairs; i 
nor that the navy of his country would 
fight for instead of against the Greeks, 
and by the battle of Navarino secure their 
enfranchisement from the Turks. Almost 
against reason, as it appeared to him, he 
resolved to believe that Greece would 
prove triumphant ; and in this spirit, augur- 
ing utimate good, yet grieving over the 
vicissitudes to be endured in the interval, 
he composed his drama. 

"Hellas" was among the last of his 
compositions, and is among the most 
beautiful. The choruses are singularly 
imaginative, and melodious in their versi- 
_fication. There are some stanzas that 
beautifully exemplify Shelley's peculiar 
style; as, for instance, the assertion of 
the intellectual empire which must be j 
forever the inheritance of the country of 
Homer, Sophocles, and Plato: 

" But Greece and her foundations are 
Buih below the tide of war ; 
Based on the crystalline sea 
Of thought and its eternity." 

And again, that philosophical truth felici- 
tously imaged forth — ■' 

" Revenge and Wrong bring forth their kind : ' 
The foul cubs like their parents are ; 
Their den is in the guilty mind, 

And Conscience feeds them with despair." , 

The conclusion of the last chorus is 
among the most beautiful of his lyrics. 
The imagery is distinct and majestic; 
the prophecy, such as poets love to dwell 
upon, the Regeneration of Mankind — 
and that regeneration reflecting back 
splendor on the foregone time, from 
which it inherits so much of intellectual 
wealth, and memory of past virtuous 
deeds, as must render the possession of 
happiness and peace of tenfold value. 



FRAGMENTS OF 
AN UNFINISHED DRAMA. 

The following fragments are part of a 
Drama undertaken for the amusement of 
the individuals who composed our inti- 
mate society, but left unfinished. I have 



FRAGMENTS OF AN UNFINISHED DRAMA. 



457 



preserved a sketch of the story as far 
as it had been shadowed in the poet's 
mind. 

An Enchantress, living in one of the 
islands of the Indian Archipelago, saves 
the life of a Pirate, a man of savage but 
noble nature. She becomes enamoured 
of him; and he, inconstant to his mortal 
love, for a while returns her passion; but 
at length, recalling the memory of her 
whom he left, and who laments his loss, 
he escapes from the Enchanted Island, 
and returns to his lady. His mode of 
life makes him again go to sea, and the 
Enchantress seizes the opportunity to 
bring him, by a spirit-brewed tempest, 
back to her Island. M. W. S. 

SCENE, BEFORE THE CaVERN OF THE 

Indian Enchantress. Ilie En- 
chantress comes fo7'th. 

Enchantress. 

He came like a dream in the dawn of 
life, 
He fled like a shadow before its 
noon; 
He is gone, and my peace is turned to 
strife. 
And I wander and wane like the 
weary moon. 

Oh, sweet Echo, wake, 
And for my sake 
Make answer the while my heart shall 
break ! 

But my heart has a music which Echo's 
lips. 
Though tender and true, yet can 
answer not. 
And the shadow that moves in the soul's 
eclipse 
Can return not the kiss by his now 
forgot ; 

Sweet lips ! he who hath 
On my desolate path 
Cast the darkness of absence, worse 
than death ! 

The Enchantress makes her spell : she 
19 answered Mf a Spirit. 
Spirit. Within the silent centre of 
the earth 



My mansion is ; where I have lived 

insphered 
From the beginning, and around my sleep 
Have woven all the wondrous imagery 
Of this dim spot, which mortals call the 

world ; 
Infinite depths of unknown elements 
Massed into one impenetrable mask; 
Sheets of immeasurable fire, and veins 
Of gold and stone, and adamantine iron. 
And as a veil in which I walk thro' 

Heaven 
I have wrought mountains, seas, and 

waves, and clouds, 
And lastly light, whose interfusion dawns 
In the dark space of interstellar air. 

A good Spirit, who watches over the 
Pirate's fate, leads, in a mysterious man- 
ner, the lady of his love to the Enchanted 
Isle; and has also led thither a Youth, 
who loves the lad)', but whose passion 
she returns only with a sisterly affection. 
The ensuing scene takes place between 
them on their arrival at the Isle, where 
they meet, but without distinct mutual 
recognition. 

[ANOTHER SCENE] 
Indian Youth and Lady. 

Indian. And, if my grief should 

still be dearer to me 
Than all the pleasures in the world 

beside, 
Why would you lighten it ? — 

lady. I offer only 

That which I seek, some human sym- 
pathy 
In this mysterious island. 

Indian. Oh ! my friend, 

My sister, my beloved ! — What do I 

say? 
My brain is dizzy, and I scarce know 

whether 
I speak to thee or her. 

Lady. Peace, perturbed heart ! 

I am to thee only as thou to mine. 
The passing wind which heals the brow 

at noon, 
And may strike cold into the breast at 

night. 



45^ 



FRAGMENTS OF AN UNFINISHED DRAMA. 



Yet cannot linger where it soothes the 

most, 
Or long soothe, could it linger. 

Indian. But you said 

You also loved? 

Lady. Loved ! Oh, I love. 

Methinks 
This word of love is fit for all the world. 
And that for gentle hearts another 

name 
Would speak of gentler thoughts than 

the world owns. 
I have loved. 

Indian. And thou lovest 

not? if so 
Young as thou art thou canst afford to 

weep. 
Lady. Oh ! would that I could claim 

exemption 
From all the bitterness of that sweet 

name. 
I loved, I love, and when I love no 

more 
Let joys and grief perish, and leave 

despair 
To ring the knell of youth. He stood 

beside me. 
The embodied vision of the brightest 

dream, 
Which like a dawn heralds the day of 

life; 
The shadow of his presence made my 

world 
A paradise. All familiar things he 

toucht, 
All common words he spoke, became to 

me 
Like forms and sounds of a diviner 

world. 
He was as is the sun in his fierce youth. 
As terrible and lovely as a tempest; 
He came, and went, and left me what I 

am. 
Alas ! Why must I think how oft we 

two 
Have sat together near the river springs, 
Under the green pavilion which the 

willow 
Spreads on the floor of the unbroken 

fountain, 
Strewn by the nurslings that linger there. 
Over that islet paved with flowers and 

moss. 



While the musk-rose leaves, like flakes 
of crimson snow. 

Showered on us, and the dove mourned 
in the pine. 

Sad prophetess of sorrows not her own? 

The crane returned to her unfrozen 
haunt, 

And the false cuckoo bade the Spring 
good morn; 

And on a wintry bough the widowed 
bird. 

Hid in the deepest night of ivy-leaves, 

Renewed the vigils of a sleepless sor- 
row. 

I, left like her, and leaving one like her. 

Alike abandoned and abandoning 

(Oh! unlike her in this!) the gentlest 
youth, 

Whose love had made my sorrows dear 
to him. 

Even as my sorrow made his love to 
me ! 
Indian. One curse of Nature stamps 
in the same mould 

The features of the wretched; and they 
are 

As like as violet to violet, 

When memory, the ghost, their odors 
keeps 

Mid the cold relics of abandoned joy. — 

Proceed. 

Lady. He was a simple inno- 

cent boy. 

I loved him well, but not as he desired; 

Yet even thus he was content to be : — 

A short content, for I was — 

Indian \_aside'\. God of heaven! 

From such an islet, such a river- 
spring ! — 

I dare not ask her if there stood upon it 

A pleasure-dome surmounted by a cres- 
cent. 

With steps to the blue water. \^Aloud."\ 
It may be 

That Nature masks in life several copies 

Of the same lot, so that the sufferers 

May feel another's sorrow as their own. 

And find in friendship what they lost in 
love. 

That cannot be: yet it is strange that 
we, 

From the same scene, by the same path 
to this 



FRAGMENTS OF AN UNFINISHED DRAMA. 



459 



Realm of abandonment — But speak ! 

your breath — 
Your breath is like soft music, your 

words are 
The echoes of a voice which on my 

heart 
Sleeps like a melody of early days. 
But as you said — 

Lady. He was so awful, yet 

So beautiful in mystery and terror, 
Calming me as the loveliness of heaven 
Soothes the unquiet sea: — and yet not 

so. 
For he seemed stormy, and would often 

seem 
A quenchless sun maskt in portentous 

clouds; 
For such his thoughts, and even his 

actions were; 
But he was not of them, nor they of 

him. 
But as they hid his splendor from the 

earth. 
Some said he was a man of blood and 

peril, 
And steept in bitter infamy to the lips. 
More need was there I should be inno- 
cent. 
More need that I should be most true 

and kind, 
And much more need that there should 

be found one 
To share remorse and scorn and soli- 
tude. 
And all the ills that wait on those who 

do 
The tasks of ruin in the world of life. 
He fled, and I have followed him. 

Indian. Such a one 

Is he who was the winter of my peace. 
But, fairest stranger, when didst thou 

depart 
From the far hills where rise the springs 

of India, 
How didst thou pass the intervening 

sea? 
Lady. If I be sure I am not dream- 
ing now, 
I should not doubt to say it was a dream. 
Methought astar came down from heaven. 
And rested mid the plants of India, 
Which I had given a shelter from the 

frost 



Within my chamber. There the meteor 

lay. 
Panting forth light among the leaves 

and flowers, 
As if it lived, and was outworn with 

speed; 
Or that it loved, and passion made the 

pulse 
Of its bright life throb like an anxious 

heart, 
Till it diffused itself, and all the chamber 
And walls seemed melted into emerald 

fire 
That burned not; in the midst of which 

appeared 
A spirit like a child, and laught aloud 
A thrilling peal of such sweet merriment 
As made the blood tingle in my warm 

feet: 
Then bent over a vase, and murmuring 
Low, unintelligible melodies, 
Placed something in the mould like 

melon seeds. 
And slowly faded, and in place of it 
A soft hand issued from the veil of fire. 
Holding a cup like a magnolia flower. 
And poured upon the earth within the 

vase 
The element with which it overflowed. 
Brighter than morning light, and purer 

than 
The water of the springs of Himalah. 
Indian. You waked not? 
Lady. Not until my dream 

became 
Like a child's legend on the tideless 

sand. 
Which the first foam erases half, and half 
Leaves legible. At length I rose, and 

went, 
Visiting my flowers from pot to pot, and 

thought 
To set new cuttings in the empty urns. 
And when I came to that beside the 

lattice, 
I saw two little dark-green leaves 
Lifting the light mould at their birth, 

and then 
I half-remembered my forgotten dream. 
And day by day, green as a gourd in 

June, 
The plant grew fresh and thick, yet no 

one knew 



460 



FRAGMENTS OF AN UNFINISHED DRAMA. 



What plant it was; its stem and tendrils 

seemed 
Like emerald snakes, mottled and dia- 
monded 
With azure mail and streaks of woven 

silver; 
And all the sheaths that folded the dark 

buds 
Rose like the crest of cobra-di-capel, 
Until the golden eye of the bright flower, 
Through the dark lashes of those veined 

lids, 
Disencumbered of their silent sleep. 
Gazed like a star into the morning light. 
Its leaves were delicate, you almost saw 
The pulses 
With which the purple velvet flower was 

fed 
To overflow, and like a poet's heart 
Changing bright fancy to sweet senti- 
ment. 
Changed half the light to fragrance. It 

soon fell, 
And to a green and dewy embryo-fruit 
Left all its treasured beauty. Day by 

day 
I nurst the plant, and on the double 

flute 
Played to it on the sunny winter days 
Soft melodies, as sweet as April rain 
On silent leaves, and sang those words 

in which 
Passion makes Echo taunt the sleeping 

strings; 
And I would send tales of forgotten love 
Late into the lone night, and sing wild 

songs 
Of maids deserted in the olden time, 
And weep like a soft cloud in April's 

bosom 
Upon the sleeping eyelids of the plant. 
So that perhaps it dreamed that Spring 

was come. 
And crept abroad into the moonlight air. 
And loosened all its limbs, as, noon by 

noon. 
The sun averted less his oblique beam. 
Indian. And the plant died not in 

the frost? 
lady. It grew; 

And went out of the lattice which I left 
Half open for it, trailing its quaint spires 
Along the garden and across the lawn, 



And down the slope of moss and thro' 

the tufts 
Of wild-flower roots, and stumps of trees 

o'ergrown 
With simple lichens, and old hoary 

stones, 
On to the margin of the glassy pool. 
Even to a nook of unblown violets 
And lilies-of-the-valley yet unborn. 
Under a pine with ivy overgrown. 
And there its fruit lay like a sleeping 

lizard 
Under the shadows; but when Spring 

indeed 
Came to unswathe her infants, and the 

lilies 
Peept from their bright green masks to 

wonder at 
This shape of Autumn couched in their 

recess. 
Then it dilated, and it grew until 
One half lay floating on the fountain 

wave. 
Whose pulse, elapst in unlike sym- 
pathies, 
Kept time 

Among the snowy water-lily buds. 
Its shape was such as Summer melody 
Of the south wind in spicy vales might 

give 
To some light cloud bound from the 

golden dawn 
To fairy isles of evening, and it seemed 
In hue and form that it had been a 

mirror 
Of all the hues and forms around it and 
Upon it pictured by the sunny beams 
Which, from the bright vibrations of the 

pool, 
Were thrown upon the rafters and the 

roof 
Of boughs and leaves, and on the pillared 

stems 
Of the dark sylvan temple, and reflec- 
tions 
Of every infant flower and star of moss 
And veined leaf in the azure odorous air. 
And thus it lay in the Elysian calm 
Of its own beauty, floating on the line 
Which, like a film in purest space, 

divided 
The heaven beneath the water from the 

heaven 



CHARLES THE FIRST. 



461 



Above the clouds; and every day I went 
Watching its growth and wondering; 
And as the day grew hot, methought I 

saw 
A glassy vapor dancing on the pool, 
And on it little quaint and filmy shapes, 
With dizzy motion, wheel and rise and 

fall. 
Like clouds of gnats with perfect linea- 
ments. 

O friend, sleep was a veil uplift from 
heaven — 

As if heaven dawned upon the world of 
dream — 

When darkness rose on the extinguished 
day 

Out of the eastern wilderness. 

Indian. I too 

Have found a moment's paradise in sleep 

Half compensate a hell of waking sor- 
row. 



CHARLES THE FIRST. 



DRAMATIS PERSONS. 

King Charles I. 

Queen Henrietta. 

Laud, Archbishop of CaJiterhiiry. 

Wentworth, Earl of Strafford. 

Lord Cottington. 

Lord Weston. 

Lord Coventry. 

Williams, Bishop of Lincoln. 

Secretary Lyttelton. 

JuxoN. 

St. John. 

Archv, the Court Fool. 

Hampden. 

Pym. 

Cromwell. 

Cromwell's Daughter. 

Sir Harry Vane tJie younger, 

Leighton. 

Bastwick. 

Prynne. 

Gentlemen of the Inns of Court, Citizens, Pur- 
siiivnfits, Marshalsmen, Law Students, 
fudges, Clerk. 



SCENE L— The Mask of the Inns 
OF Court. 

A Pursuivant. Place, for the Marshal 
of the Mask ! 



First Citizen. What thinkest thou of 

this quaint mask which turns. 
Like morning from the shadow of the 

night. 
The night to day, and London to a 

place 
Of peace and joy? 

Second Citizen. And Hell to 

Heaven, 
Eight years are gone. 
And they seem hours, since in this popu- 
lous street 
I trod on grass made green by summer's 

rain. 
For the red plague kept state within 

that palace 
W^here now reigns vanity. In nine years 

more 
The roots will be refresht with civil 

blood; 
And thank the mercy of insulted Heaven 
That sin and wrongs wound as an 

orphan's cry, 
The patience of the great Avenger's ear. 
A Youth. Yet, father, 't is a happy 

sight to see. 
Beautiful, innocent, and unforbidden 
By God or man; — 't is like the bright 

procession 
Of skyey visions in a solemn dream 
From which men wake as from a para- 
dise. 
And draw new strength to tread the 

thorns of life. 
If God be good, wherefore should this 

be evil? 
And if this be not evil, dost thou not 

draw 
Unseasonable poison from the flowers 
Which bloom so rarely in this barren 

world? 
Oh, kill these bitter thoughts which 

make the present 
Dark as the future ! — 

When Avarice and Tyranny, vigilant 

Fear, 
And open-eyed Conspiracy lie sleeping 
As on Hell's threshold; and all gentle 

thoughts 
Waken to worship Him who givetb 

joys 
With his own gift. 



462 



CHARLES THE FIRST. 



Second Ciiizen. How young art thou 

in this old age of time ! 
How green in this gray world ! Canst 

thou discern 
The signs of seasons, yet perceive no 

hint 
Of change in that stage-scene in which 

thou art 
Not a spectator but an actor? or 
Art thou a puppet moved by [enginery]? 
The day that dawns in fire will die in 

storms, 
Even tho' the noon be calm. My 

travel 's done, — 
Before the whirlwind wakes I shall have 

found 
My inn of lasting rest; but thou must 

still 
Be journeying on in this inclement air. 
Wrap thy old cloak about thy back; 
Nor leave the broad and plain and beaten 

road, 
Altho' no flowers smile on the trodden 

dust, 
For the violet paths of pleasure. This 

Charles the First 
Rose like the equinoctial sun, . . . 
By vapors, thro' whose threatening 

ominous veil 
Darting his altered influence he has 

gained 
This height of noon — from which he 

must decline 
Amid the darkness of conflicting storms, 
To dank extinction and to latest 

night . . . 
There goes the apostate Strafford; he 

whose titles 

whispered aphorisms 
From Machiavel and Bacon : and, if 

Judas 
Had been as brazen and as bold as he — 
First Citizen. That is the Archbishop. 
Second Citizen. Rather say the 

Pope: 
London will be soon his Rome : he walks 
As if he trod upon the heads of men : 
He looks elate, drunken with blood and 

gold; — 
Beside him moves the Babylonian woman 
Invisibly, and with her as with his 

shadow. 
Mitred adulterer ! he is joined in sin, 



Which turns Heaven's milk of mercy to 
revenge. 

Third Citizen {^lifting up his eyes). 

Good Lord ! rain it down upon him ! . . . 
Amid her ladies walks the papist queen. 
As if her nice feet scorned our English 

earth. 
The Canaanitish Jezebel ! I would be 
A dog if I might tear her with my teeth ! 
There 's old Sir Henry Vane, the Earl of 

Pembroke, 
Lord Essex, and Lord Keeper Coventry, 
And others who make base their English 

breed 
By vile participation of their honors 
With papists, atheists, tyrants, and apos- 
tates. 
When lawyers mask 't is time for honest 

men 
To strip the vizor from their purposes. 
A seasonable time for maskers this ! 
When Englishmen and Protestants should 

sit 

dust on their dishonored heads. 
To avert the wrath of him whose scourge 

is felt 
For the great sins which have drawn 

down from Heaven 

and foreign overthrow. 
The remnant of the martyred saints in 

Rochefort 
Have been abandoned by their faithless 

allies 
To that idolatrous and adulterous torturer 
Lewis of France, — the Palatinate is 

lost — 

Enter Leighton {who has been branded 
in the face) ««</ Bastvvick. 

Canst thou be — art thou — ? 

Leighton. I w^zi' Leighton : what 

I am thou seest. And yet turn thine 
eyes. 

And with thy memory look on thy friend's 
mind. 

Which is unchanged, and where is writ- 
ten deep 

The sentence of my judge. 

Third Citizen. Are these the 

marks with which 

Laud thinks to improve the image of his 
Maker 



CHARLES THE EIRST. 



463 



Stampt on the face of man? Curses 

upon him, 
The impious tyrant ! 

Second Citizen. It is said besides 

That lewd and papist drunkards may 

profane 
The Sabbath with their . . . 
And has permitted that most heathenish 

custom 
Of dancing round a pole drest up with 

wreaths 
On May-day. 

A man who thus twice crucifies his God 
May well his brother. — In my 

mind, friend, 
The root of all this ill is prelacy. 
I would cut up the root. 

Third Citizen. And by what 

means? 
Second Citizen. Smiting each Bishop 

under the fifth rib. 
Third Citizejt. You seem to know 

the vulnerable place 
Of these same crocodiles. 

Second Citizen. I learnt it in 

Egyptian bondage, sir. Your worm of 

Nile 
Betrays not with its flattering tears like 

they; 
For, when they cannot kill, they whine 

and weep. 
Nor is it half so greedy of men's bodies 
As they of soul and all; nor does it 

wallow 
In slime as they in simony and lies 
And close lusts of the flesh. 

A Marshalsman. Give place, give 

place ! 
You torch-bearers, advance to the great 

gate. 
And then attend the Marshal of the 

Mask 
Into the royal presence. 

A Lazv Student. What thinkest 

thou 
Of this quaint show of ours, my aged 

friend? 
Even now we see the redness of the 

torches 
Inflame the night to the eastward, and 

the clarions 
Gasp to us on the wind's wave. It 

comes ! 



And their sounds, floating hither round 

the pageant. 
Rouse up the astonished air. 

First Citizen. I will not think but 

that our country's wounds 
May yet be healed. The king is just 

and gracious, 
Tho' wicked counsels now pervert his 

will : 
These once cast off — 

Second Citize?t. As adders cast 

their skins 
And keep their venom, so kings often 

change; 
Councils and counsellors hang on one 

another, 
Hiding the loathsome . . . 
Like the base patchwork of a leper's 

rags. 
The Youth. O, still those dissonant 

thoughts ! — List how the music 
Grows on the enchanted air ! And see, 

the torches 
Restlessly flashing, and the crowd di- 
vided 
Like waves before an admiral's prow ! 

A Marshals}}ian. Give place 

To the Marshal of the Mask ! 

A Pursuivant. Room for 

the King ! 
The Youth. How glorious ! See 

those thronging chariots 
Rolling, like painted clouds before the 

wind. 
Behind their solemn steeds: how some 

are shaped 
Like curved shells dyed by the azure 

depths 
Of Indian seas; some like the new-born 

moon; 
And some like cars in which the Romans 

climbed 
(Canopied by Victory's eagle-wings out- 
spread) 
The Capitolian ! — See how gloriously 
The mettled horses in the torchlight stir 
Their gallant riders, whik they check 

their pride. 
Like shapes of some diviner element 
Than English air, and beings nobler than 
The envious and admiring multitude. 

Second Citizen. Ay, there they are — 
Nobles, and sons of nobles, patentees, 



464 



CHARLES THE FIRST, 



Monopolists, and stewards of this poor 

farm, 
On whose lean sheep sit the prophetic 

crows. 
Here is the pomp that strips the house- 
less orphan, 
Here is the pride that breaks the desolate 

heart. 
These are the lilies glorious as Solomon, 
Who toil not, neither do they spin, — 

unless 
It be the webs they catch poor rogues 

withal. 
Here is the surfeit which to them who 

earn 
The niggard wages of the earth, scarce 

leaves 
The tithe that will support them till they 

crawl 
Back to her cold hard bosom. Here is 

health 
Followed by grim disease, glory by 

shame. 
Waste by lame famine, wealth by squalid 

want, 
And England's sin by England's punish- 
ment. 
And, as the effect pursues the cause 

foregone, 
Lo, giving substance to my words, be- 
hold 
At once the sign and the thing signified — 
A troop of cripples, beggars, and lean 

outcasts, 
Horst upon stumbling jades, carted with 

dung, 
Dragged for a day from cellars and low 

cabins 
And rotten hiding-holes, to point the 

moral 
Of this presentment, and bring up the 

rear 
Of painted pomp with misery ! 

The Youth. 'T is but 

The anti-mask, and serves as discords 

do 
In sweetest music. Who would love 

May flowers 
If they succeeded not to Winter's flaw; 
Or day unchanged by night; or joy itself 
Without the touch of sorrow? 

Second Ciiizen. I and thou — 

A Marshalsman, Place, give place! 



SCENE II. — A Chamber in White- 
hall. Enter the KiNG, QuEEN, 
Laud, Lord Strafford, Lord Cot- 
TINGTON, and other Lords ; Archy ; 
also St. John, zvith some Gentlemen of 
the Inns of Court. 

King. Thanks, gentlemen. I heart- 
ily accept 

This token of your service : your gay 
mask 

Was performed gallantly. And it shows 
well 

When subjects twine such flowers of ob- 
servance 

With the sharp thorns that deck the Eng- 
lish crown. 

A gentle heart enjoys what it confers, 

Even as it suffers that which it inflicts, 

Tho' Justice guides the stroke. 

Accept my hearty thanks. 

Queen. And, gentlemen, 

Call your poor Queen your debtor. 
Your quaint pageant 

Rose on me like the figures of past years, 

Treading their still path back to infancy. 

More beautiful and mild as they draw 
nearer 

The quiet cradle. I could have almost 
wept 

To think I was in Paris, where these 
shows 

Are well devised — such as I was ere yet 

My young heart shared a portion of the 
burden. 

The careful weight, of this great mon- 
archy. 

There, gentlemen, between the sove- 
reign's pleasure 

And that which it regards, no clamor 
lifts 

Its proud interposition. 

In Paris ribald censurers dare not move 

Their poisonous tongues against these 
sinless sports; 

And his smile 

Warms those who bask in it, as ours 
would do 

If . . , Take my heart's thanks: add 
them, gentlemen, 

To those good words which, were he 
King of France, 



CHARLES THE FIRST. 



465 



My royal lord would turn to golden 
deeds. 

St. John. Madam, the love of Eng- 
lishmen can make 
The lightest favor of their lawful king 
Outweigh a despot's. — We humbly take 

our leaves, 
Enricht by smiles which France can 
never buy. 
[A'x^z/w/ St. John and the Gentle- 
VI en of the Inns of Court. 

King. My Lord Archbishop, 
Mark you what spirit sits in St. John's 

eyes? 
Methinksitis too saucy for this presence. 

Archy. Yes, pray your Grace look : 
for, like an unsophisticated [eye] sees 
everything upside down, you who are 
wise will discern the shadow of an idiot 
in lawn sleeves and a rochet setting 
springes to catch woodcocks in hay-mak- 
ing time. Poor Archy, whose owl-eyes 
are tempered to the error of his age, and 
because he is a fool, and by special or- 
dinance of God forbidden ever to see 
himself as he is, sees now in that deep 
eye a blindfold devil sitting on the ball, 
and weighing words out between king 
and subjects. One scale is full of prom- 
ises, and the other full of protestations: 
and then another devil creeps behind the 
first out of the dark windings [of a] 
pregnant lawyer's brain, and takes the 
bandage from the other's eyes, and throws 
a sword into the left-hand scale, for all 
the world like my Lord Essex's there. 

Strafford. A rod in pickle for the 
Fool's back ! 

Archy. Ay, and some are now smil- 
ing whose tears will make the brine; for 
the Fool sees — 

Strafford. Insolent ! You shall have 
your coat turned and be whipt out of the 
palace for this. 

Archy. When all the fools are 
whipt, and all the Protestant writers, 
while the knaves are whipping the fools 
ever since a thief was set to catch a thief. 
If all turncoats were whipt out of pal- 
aces, poor Archy would be disgraced in 
good company. Let the knaves whip the 
fools, and all the fools laugh at it. [Let 
the] wise and goodly slit each other's 



noses and ears (having no need of any 
sense of discernment in their craft); and 
the knaves, to marshal them, join in a 
procession to Bedlam, to entreat the mad- 
men to omit their sublime Platonic con- 
templations, and manage the state of 
England. Let all the honest men who 
lie pinched up at the prisons or the pillo- 
ries, in custody of the pursuivants of the 
High-Commission Court, marshal them. 
Enter Secretary Lyttelton, luith 
papers. 
King ( lookitjg over the papers ) . These 

stiff Scots 
His Grace of Canterbury must take order 
To force under the Church's yoke. — 

You, Wentworth, 
Shall be myself in Ireland, and shall add 
Your wisdom, gentleness, and energy. 
To what in me were wanting. — My 

Lord Weston, 
Look that those merchants draw not 

without loss 
Their bullion from the Tower; and, on 

the payment 
Of shipmoney, take fullest compensation 
For violation of our royal forests, 
Whose limits, from neglect, have been 

o'ergrown 
With cottages and cornfields. 'The ut- 
termost 
Farthing exact from those who claim ex- 
emption 
From knighthood: that which once was 

a reward 
Shall thus be made a punishment, that 

subjects 
May know how majesty can wear at will 
The rugged mood. — My Lord of Cov- 
entry, 
Lay my command upon the Courts below 
That bail be not accepted for the pris- 
oners 
Under the warrant of the Star Chamber. 
The people shall not find the stubborn- 
ness 
Of Parliament a cheap or easy method 
Of deahng with their rightful sovereign: 
And doubt not this, my Lord of Coven- 
try, 
We will find time and place for fit re- 
buke. — 
My Lord of Canterbury. 



466 



CHARLES THE FIRST. 



Archy. The fool is here. 

Laud, I crave permission of your 

Majesty 
To order that this insolent fellow be 
Chastised : he mocks the sacred charac- 
ter, 
Scoffs at the state, and — 

King. What, my Archy? 

He mocks and mimics all he sees and 

hears, 
Yet with a quaint and graceful license — 

Prithee 
For this once do not as Prynne would, 

were he 
Primate of England. With your Grace's 

leave. 
He lives in his own world; and, like a 

parrot 
Hung in his gilded prison from the 

window 
Of a queen's bower over the public way, 
Blasphemes with a bird's mind : — his 

words, like arrows 
Which know no aim beyond the archer's 

wit, 
Strike sometimes what eludes philos- 
ophy. — 
( To Archy.) Go, sirrah, and repent of 

your offence 
Ten minutes in the rain: be it your 

penance 
To bring news how the world goes there. 

\_Exit Archy. 

Poor Archy ! 

He weaves about himself a world of 

mirth 
Out of the wreck of ours. 

Laud. I take with patience, as my 

Master did, 
All scoffs permitted from above. 

King. My lord, 

Pray overlook these papers. Archy's 

words 
Had wings, but these have talons. 

Queen. And the lion 

That wears them must be tamed. My 

dearest lord, 
I see the new-born courage in your eye 
Armed to strike dead the spirit of the 

time. 
Which spurs to rage the many-headed 

beast. 
Do thou persist : for, faint but in resolve, 



And it were better thou hadst still re- 
mained 
The slave of thine own slaves, who tear 

like curs 
The fugitive, and flee from the pursuer; 
And Opportunity, that empty wolf, 
Flies at his throat who falls. Subdue 

thy actions 
Even to the disposition of thy purpose, 
And be that tempered as the Ebro's 

steel; 
And banish weak-eyed Mercy to the 

weak, 
Whence she will greet thee with a gift 

of peace, 
And not betray thee with a traitor's kiss. 
As when she keeps the company of 

rebels, 
Who think that she is Fear. This do, 

lest we 
Should fall as from a glorious pinnacle 
In a bright dream, and wake as from a 

dream 
Out of our worshipt state. 

King. Beloved friend, 

God is my witness that this weight of 

power. 
Which he sets me my earthly task to 

wield 
Under his law, is my delight and pride 
Only because thou lovest that and me. 
For a king bears the office of a God 
To all the under world; and to his God 
Alone he must deliver up his trust. 
Unshorn of its permitted attributes. 
[It seems] now as the baser elements 
Had mutinied against the golden sun 
That kindles them to harmony, and 

quells 
Their self-destroying rapine. The wild 

million 
Strike at the eye that guides them; like 

as humors 
Of the distempered body that conspire 
Against the spirit of life throned in the 

heart, — 
And thus become the prey of one another. 
And last of death — 

Strafford. That which would be am- 
bition in a subject 
Is duty in a sovereign; for on him, 
As on a keystone, hangs the arch of 

life, 



CHARLES THE FIRST. 



467 



Whose safety is its strength. Degree 

and form, 
And all that makes the age of reasoning 

man 
More memorable than a. beast's, depend 
On this — that Right should fence itself 

inviolably 
With power; in which respect the state 

of England 
From usurpation by the insolent commons 
Cries for reform. 
Get treason, and spare treasure. Fee 

with coin 
The loudest murmurers; feed with jeal- 
ousies 
Opposing factions, — be thyself of none; 
And borrow gold of many, for those 

who lend 
Will serve thee till thou payest them; 

and thus 
Keep the fierce spirit of the hour at bay, 
Till time, and its coming generations 
Of nights and days unborn, bring some 

one chance, 

Or war, or pestilence, or Nature's self, 
By some distemperature or terrible sign. 
Be as an arbiter betwixt themselves. 

Nor let your Majesty 
Doubt here the peril of the unseen event. 
How did your brother kings, coheritors 
In your high interest in the subject earth, 
Rise past such troubles to that height of 

power 
Where now they sit, and awfully serene 
Smile on the trembling world? Such 

popular storms 
Philip the Second of Spain, this Lewis 

of France, 
And late the German head of many 

bodies. 
And every petty lord of Italy, 
Quelled or by arts or arms. Is England 

poorer 
Or feebler? or art thou who wield'st her 

power 
Tamer than they? or shall this island 

be — 
[Girdled] by its inviolable waters — 
To the world present and the world to 

come 
Sole pattern of extinguisht monarchy? 
Not if thou dost as I would have thee do. 



King. Your words shall be my deeds : 

You speak the image of my thought. 
My friend 

(If kings can have a friend, I call thee 
so), 

Beyond the large commission which be- 
longs 

Under the great seal of the realm, take 
this: 

And, for some obvious reasons, let there 
be 

No seal on it, except my kingly word 

And honor as I am a gentleman. 

Be — as thou art within my heart and 
mind — 

Another self, here and in Ireland: 

Do what thou judgest well, take amplest 
license, 

And stick not even at questionable 
means. 

Hear me, Wentworth. My word is as a 
wall 

Between thee and this world thine 
enemy — 

That hates thee, for thou lovest me. 
Strafford. I own 

No friend but thee, no enemies but thine : 

Thy lightest thought is my eternal law. 

How weak, how short, is life to pay — 
King. Peace, peace ! 

Thou ow'st me nothing yet. 

( To Laud.) My lord, what say 

Those papers? 

Laud. Your Majesty has ever inter- 
posed. 

In lenity towards your native soil, 

Between the heavy vengeance of the 
Church 

And Scotland. Mark the consequence 
of warming 

This brood of northern vipers in your 
bosom. 

The rabble, instructed no doubt 

By Loudon, Lindsay, Hume, and false 
Argyll 

(For the waves never menace heaven 
until 

Scourged by the wind's invisible tyr- 
anny), 

Have in the very temple of the Lord 

Done outrage to his chosen ministers. 

They scorn the liturgy of the holy 
Church, 



468 



CHARLES THE FIRST. 



Refuse to obey her canons, and deny 
The apostolic power with which the 

Spirit 
Has filled its elect vessels, even from him 
Who held the keys with power to loose 

and bind, 
To him who now pleads in this royal 

presence. — 
Let ampler powers and new instructions 

be 
Sewt to the High Commissioners in 

Scotland. 
To death, imprisonment, and confisca- 
tion, 
Add torture, add the ruin of the kindred 
Of the offender, add the brand of in- 
famy, 
Add mutilation: and if this suffice not, 
Unleash the sword and fire, and in their 

thirst 
They may lick up that scum of schis- 
matics. 
I laugh at those weak rebels who, de- 
siring 
What we possess, still prate of Christian 

peace. 
As if those dreadful arbitrating messen- 
gers 
Which play the part of God 'twixt right 

and wrong, 
Should be let loose against the innocent 

sleep 
Of templed cities and the smiling fields, 
For some poor argument of policy 
Which touches our own profit or our 

pride, 
(Where it indeed were Christian charity 
To turn the cheek even to the smiter's 

hand: ) 
And, when our great Redeemer, when 

our God, 
When he who gave, accepted, and re- 
tained, 
Himself in propitiation of our sins, 
Is scorned in his immediate ministry, 
With hazard of the inestimable loss 
Of all the truth and discipline which is 
Salvation to the exlremest generation 
Of men innumerable, they talk of peace ! 
Such peace as Canaan found, let Scot- 
land now: 
For, by that Christ who came to bring a 
sword, 



Not peace, upon the earth, and gave 
command 

To his disciples at the passover 

That each should sell his robe and buy a 
sword, — 

Once strip that minister of naked wrath, 

And it shall never sleep in peace again 

Till Scotland bend or break. 

King. My Lord Arch- 

bishop, 

Do what thou wilt and what thou canst 
in this. 

Thy earthly even as thy heavenly King 

Gives thee large power in his unquiet 
realm. 

But we want money, and my mind mis- 
gives me 

That for so great an enterprise, as yet. 

We are unfurnisht. 

Strafford. Yet it may not 

long 

Rest on our wills. 

Cottinglon. The expenses 

Of gathering shipmoney, and of dis- 
training 

For every petty rate (for we encounter 

A desperate opposition inch by inch 

In every warehouse and on every farm) 

Have swallowed up the gross sum of 
the imposts; 

So that, tho' felt as a most grievous 
scourge 

Upon the land, they stand us in small 
stead 

As touches the receipt. 

Strafford. 'T is a conclu- 

sion 

Most arithmetical : and thence you infer 

Perhaps the assembling of a parliament. 

Now, if a man should call his dearest 
enemies 

To sit in licensed judgment on his life. 

His Majesty might wisely take that 
course. 

S^ A side to COTTINGTON. 

It is enough to expect from these lean 

imposts 
That they perform the office of a scourge. 
Without more profit. (^Aloud.^ Fines 

and confiscations. 
And a forced loan from the refractory 

city. 
Will fill our coffers: and the golden love 



CHARLES THE FIRST. 



469 



Of loyal gentlemen and noble friends 
For the worshipt father of our com- 
mon country, 
With contriljutions from the Catholics, 
Will make Rebellion pale in our excess. 
Be these the exnedients until time and 

wisdom 
Shall frame a settled state of govern- 
ment. 
Laud. And weak expedients they ! 

Have we not drained 
All, till the which seemed 

A mine exhaustless? 

Strafford. And the love 

which is, 
If loyal hearts could turn their blood to 

gold. 
Laud. Both now grow barren : and 

I speak it not 
As loving parliaments, which, as they 

have been 
In the right hand of bold bad mighty 

kings 
The scourges of the bleeding Church, I 

hate. 
Methinks they scarcely can deserve our 

fear. 
Strafford. Oh ! my dear liege, take 

back the wealth thou gavest : 
With that, take all I held, but as in 

trust 
For thee, of mine inheritance : leave 

me but 
This unprovided body for thy service, 
And a mind dedicated to no care 
Except thy safety : — but assemble not 
A parliament. Hundreds will bring, 

like me, 
Their fortunes, as they would their blood, 

before — 
King. •No ! thou who judgest them 

art but one. Alas ! 
We should be too much out of love with 

Heaven, 
Did this vile world show many such as 

thee, 
Thou perfect, just, and honorable man ! 
Never shall it be said that Charles of 

England 
Stript those he loved for fear of those he 

scorns; 
Nor will he so much misbecome his throne 
As to impoverish those who most adorn 



And best defend it. That you urge, dear 

Strafford, 
Inclines me rather — 

Queen. To a parlia- 

ment ? 
Is this thy firmness? and thou wilt pre- 
side 
Over a knot of censurers. 

To the unswearing of thy best resolves, 
And choose the worst, when the worst 

comes too soon? 
Plight not the worst before the worst 

must come. 
Oh, wilt thou smile whilst our ribald foes, 
Drest in their own usurpt authority, 
Sharpen their tongues on Henrietta's 

fame? 
It is enough ! Thou lovest me no more ! 

[ Weeps. 
King. Oh, Henrietta! 

[ They talk apart. 
Cottington (^to Laud). Money we 

have none : 
And all the expedients of my Lord of 

Strafford 
Will scarcely meet the arrears. 

Laud. Without 

delay 
An army must be sent into the north; 
Followed by a Commission of the Church, 
With amplest power to quench in fire 

and blood, 
And tears and terror, and the pity of hell, 
The intenser wrath of Heresy. God will 

give 
Victory; and victory over Scotland give 
The lion England tamed into our hands. 
That will lend power, and power bring 

gold. 
Cottington. Meanwhile 

We must begin first where your Grace 

leaves off. 
Gold must give power, or — 

Laud. I am not averse 

From the assembling of a parliament. 
Strong actions and smooth words might 

teach them soon 
The lesson to obey. And are they not 
A bubble fashioned by the monarch's 

mouth, 
The birth of one light breath? If they 

serve no purpose, 
A word dissolves them. 



470 



CHARLES THE FIRST. 



Slrafford. The engine of parlia- 

ments 
Might be deferred until I can bring over 
The Irish regiments : they will serve to 

assure 
The issue of the war against the Scots. 
And, this game won — which if lost, all 

is lost — 

Gather these chosen leaders of the rebels, 

And call them, if you will, a parliament. 

King. Oh, be our feet still tardy to 

shed blood. 

Guilty tho' it may be ! I would still 

spare 
The stubborn country of my birth, and 

ward 
From countenances which I loved in 

youth 
The wrathful Church's lacerating hand. 
(7"f7LAUD). Have you o'erlookt the 
other articles? 

[Re-enter Archy. 

Land. Hazlerig, Hampden, Pym, 

young Harry Vane, 

Cromwell, and other rebels of less note, 

Intend to sail with the next favoring 

wind 
For the Plantations. 

Archy. Where they think to found 
A commonwealth like Gonzalo's in the 

play, 
Gyngecocoenic and pantisocratic. 
King. What's that, sirrah? 
Archy. New devil's politics. 

Hell is the pattern of all commonwealths : 
Lucifer was the first republican. 
Will you hear Merlin's prophecy, how 
three posts 
*' In one brainless skull, when the 

whitethorn is full. 
Shall sail round the world, and come 

back again : 
Shall sail round the world in a brain- 
less skull. 
And come back again when the moon 
is at full: " — 
When, in spite of the Church, 
They will hear homilies of whatever 

length 
Or form they please. 

Cottington. So please your Majesty to 
sign this order 
For their detention. 



Archy. If your Majesty were tor- 
mented night and day by fever, gout, 
rheumatism, and stone, and asthma, etc., 
and you found these diseases had secretly 
entered into a conspiracy to abandon you, 
should you think it necessary to lay an 
embargo on the port by which they meant 
to dispeople your unquiet kingdom of 
man? 

King. If fear were made for kings, 
the Fool mocks wisely; 
But in this case — (^writing). Here, my 

lord, take the warrant. 
And see it duly executed forthwith. — 
That imp of malice and mockery shall be 
punisht. 

[Exeunt all but King, Queen, 
and Archy. 

Archy. Ay, I am the physician of 
whom Plato prophesied, who was to be 
accused by the confectioner before a jury 
of children, who found him guilty with- 
out waiting for the summing-up, and 
hanged him without benefit of clergy. 
Thus Baby Charles, and the Twelfth- 
night Queen of Hearts, and the over- 
grown schoolboy Cottington, and that 
little urchin Laud — who would reduce a 
verdict of "guilty, death," by famine, if 
it were impregnable by composition — 
all impanelled against poor Archy for 
presenting them bitter physic the last day 
of the holidays. 

Queen. Is the rain over, sirrah? 

King. When it rains 

And the sun shines, 't will rain again to- 
morrow : 
And therefore never smile till you 'vc 
done crying. 

Archy. But 't is all over now : like the 
April anger of woman, the gentle sky has 
wept itself serene. 

Queen. What news abroad? how 
looks the world this morning? 

Archy. Gloriously as a grave covered 
with virgin flowers. There 's a rainbow 
in the sky. Let your Majesty look at it, 
for 

"A rainbow in the morning 
Is the shepherd's warning ; " 

and the flocks of which you are the pas- 
tor are scattered among the mountain' 



CHARLES THE FIRST. 



471 



tops, where every drop of water is a flake 
of snow, and the breath of May pierces 
like d. January blast. 

King. The sheep have mistaken the 
wolf for their shepherd, my poor boy; 
and the shepherd, the wolves for their 
watchdogs. 

Queen. But the rainbow was a good 
sign, Archy: it says that the waters of 
the deluge are gone, and can return no 
more. 

Archy. Ay, the salt-water one: but 
that of tears and blood must yet come 
down, and that of fire follow, if there be 
any truth in lies. — The rainbow hung 
over the city with all its shops, . . . and 
churches, from north to south, like a 
bridge of congregated lightning pieced by 
the masonry of heaven — like a balance 
in which the angel that distributes the 
coming hour was weighing that heavy 
one whose poise is now felt in the light- 
est hearts, before it bows the proudest 
heads under the meanest feet. 

Queen. Who taught you this trash, 
sirrah? 

Archy. A torn leaf out of an old 
book trampled in the dirt. — But for the 
rainbow. It moved as the sun moved, 
and . . . until the top of the Tower . . . 
of a cloud through its left-hand tip, and 
Lambeth Palace look as dark as a rock 
before the other. Methought I saw a 
crown figured upon one tip, and a mitre 
on the other. So, as I had heard treas- 
ures were found where the rainbow 
quenches its points upon the earth, I set 
off, and at the Tower — But I shall not 
tell your Majesty what I found close to 
the closet-window on which the rainbow 
had glimmered. 

King. Speak : I will make my Fool 
my conscience. 

Archy. Then conscience is a fool. — 
I saw there a cat caught in a rat-trap. 
I heard the rats squeak behind the wains- 
cots : it seemed to me that the very mice 
were consulting on the manner of her 
death. 

Queen. Archy is shrewd and bitter. 

Archy. Like the season, 

so blow the winds. — But at the other 
end of the rainbow, where the gray rain 



was tempered along the grass and leaves 
by a tender interfusion of violet and gold 
in the meadows beyond Lambeth, wliat 
think you that I found instead of a mitre? 
King. Vane's wits perhaps. 
Archy. Something as vain. I saw 
a gross vapor hovering in a stinking ditch 
over the carcass of a dead ass, some rot- 
ten rags, and broken dishes — the wrecks 
of what once administered to the stuffing- 
out and the ornament of a worm of 
worms. His Grace of Canterbury ex- 
pects to enter the New Jerusalem some 
Palm Sunday in triumph on the ghost of 
this ass. 

Queen. Enough, enough ! Go desire 

Lady Jane 
She place my lute, together with the 

music 
Mari received last week from Italy, 
In my boudoir, and — \^Exit Archy. 
Altig. I '11 go in. 

Queen. My beloved lord, 

Have you not noted that the Fool of late 
Has lost his careless mirth, and that his 

words 
Sound like the echoes of our saddest 

fears? 
What can it mean? I should be loath to 

think 
Some factious slave had tutored him. 

King. Oh, no ! 

He is but Occasion's pupil. Partly 't is 
That our minds piece the vacant intervals 
Of his wild words with their own fash- 
ioning, — 
As in the imagery of summer clouds. 
Or coals of the winter fire, idlers find 
The perfect shadows of their teeming 

thoughts : 
And partly, that the terrors of the time 
Are sown by wandering Rumor in all 

spirits; 
And in the lightest and the least, may 

best 
Be seen the current of the coming wind. 
Queeji. Your brain is overwrought 

with these deep thoughts. 
Come, I will sing to you; let us go try 
These airs from Italy; and, as we pass 
The gallery, we '11 decide where that 

Correggio 
Shall hang — the Virgin Mother 



472 



CHARLES THE FIRST. 



With her child, born the King of heaven 

and earth, 
Whose reign is men's salvation. And 

you shall see 
A cradled miniature of yourself asleep, 
Stampt on the heart by never-erring 

love; 
Liker than any Vandyke ever made, 
A pattern to the unborn age of thee, 
Over whose sweet beauty I have wept 

for joy 
A thousand times, and now should weep 

for sorrow, 
Did I not think that after we were dead 
Our fortunes would spring high in him, 

and that 
The cares we waste upon our heavy 

crown 
Would make it light and glorious as a 

wreath 
Of Heaven's beams for his dear innocent 

brow. 
King. Dear Henrietta ! 



SCENE in. —The Star Chamber. 
Laud, Juxon, Strafford, and others, 
as Judges. Prynne as a Prisoner, 
and then Bastwick. 

Laud. Bring forth the prisoner Bast- 
wick: let the clerk 
Recite his sentence. 

Clerk. " That he pay five 

thousand 
Pounds to the king, lose both his ears, 

be branded 
With red-hot iron on the cheek and fore- 
head. 
And be imprisoned within Lancaster 

Castle 
During the pleasure of the Court." 

Laud. • Prisoner, 

If you have aught to say wherefore this 

sentence 
Should not be put into effect, now speak. 
Juxon. If you have aught to plead in 
mitigation, 
Speak. 

Bashvick, Thus, my lords. If, 

like the prelates, I 
Were an invader of the royal power, 
A public scorner of the word of God, 



Profane, idolatrous, popish, superstitious, 
Impious in heart and in tyrannic act. 
Void of wit, honesty, and temperance; 
If Satan were my lord, as theirs, — our God 
Pattern of all I should avoid to do; 
Were I an enemy of my God and King 
And of good men, as ye are; — I should 

merit 
Your fearful state and gilt prosperity, 
Which, when ye wake from the last sleep, 

shall turn 
To cowls and robes of everlasting fire. 
But, as I am, I bid ye grudge me not 
The only earthly favor ye can yield. 
Or I think worth acceptance at your 

hands, — 
Scorn, mutilation, and imprisonment. 

Even as my Master did, 
Until Heaven's kingdom shall descend 

on earth. 
Or earth be like a shadow in the light 
Of heaven absorbed — some few tumult- 
uous years 
Will pass, and leave no wreck of what 

opposes 
His will whose will is power. 

Laud. Officer, take the prisoner from 

the bar. 
And be his tongue slit for his insolence. 
Bashvick. While this hand holds a 

pen — 
Laud. Be his hands — 

Juxon. Stop ! 

Forbear, my lord ! The tongue, which 

now can speak 
No terror, would interpret, being dumb, 
Heaven's thunder to our harm; . . . 
And hands, which now write only their 

own shame, 
With bleeding stumps might sign our 

blood away. 
Laud. Much more such "mercy" 

among men would be. 
Did all the ministers of Heaven's revenge 
Flinch thus from earthly retribution. I 
Could suffer what I would inflict. 

\^Exit ^AST'WICK guarded. 
Bring up 
The Lord Bishop of Lincoln. — 

( 7'o Strafford). Know you not 

That, in distraining for ten thousand 

pounds 
Upon his books and furniture at Lincoln, 



CHARLES THE FIRST. 



473 



Were found these scandalous and sedi- 
tious letters 

Sent from one Osbaldistone, who is fled? 

I speak it not as touching this poor per- 
son; 

But of the office which should make it 
holy, 

Were it as vile as it was ever spotless. 

Mark too, my lord, that this expression 
strikes 

His Majesty, if I misinterpret not. 
Enter Bishop Williams guarded. 
Strafford. 'T were politic and just 
that Williams taste 

The bitter fruit of his connection with 

The schismatics. But you, my Lord 
Archbishop, 

Who owed your first promotion to his 
favor. 

Who grew beneath his smile — 

Land. Would therefore beg 

The office of his judge from this High 
Court, — 

That it shall seem, even as it is, that I, 

In my assumption of this sacred robe, 

Have put aside all worldly preference, 

All sense of all distinction of all persons. 

All thoughts but of the service of the 
Church. — 

Bishop of Lincoln ! 

IVilliams. Peace, proud hierarch ! 

I know my sentence, and I own it just. 

Thou wilt repay me less than I deserve. 

In stretching to the utmost 



SCENE IV. — Hampden, Pym, Crom- 
well, his Daughter, and young SiR 
Harry Vane. 

Hampden. England, farewell, thou 

who hast been my cradle, 
Shalt never be my dungeon or my grave ! 
I held what I inherited in thee, 
As pawn for that inheritance of freedom 
Which thou hast sold for thy despoiler's 

smile : 
How can I call thee England, or my 

country? — 
Does the wind hold? 

Vane. The vanes sit steady 

Upon the Abbey towers. The silver 

lightnings 



Of the evening star, spite of the city's 

smoke, 
Tell that the north wind reigns in the 

upper air. 
Mark too that flock of fleecy-winged 

clouds 
Sailing athwart St. Margaret's. 

Hampden. . Hail, fleet herald 

Of tempest ! that tude pilot who shall 

guide 
Hearts free as his, to realms as pure as 

thee. 
Beyond the shot of tyranny. 
Beyond the webs of that swoln spider. . . 
Beyond the curses, calumnies, and lies 
Of atheist priests ! And thou 

Fair star, whose beam lies on the wide 

Atlantic, 
Athwart its zones of tempest and of calm. 
Bright as the path to a beloved home. 
Oh, light us to the isles of the evening 

land ! 
Like floating Edens cradled in the glim- 
mer 
Of sunset, through the distant mist of 

years 
Toucht by departing hope, they gleam ! 

lone regions. 
Where power's poor dupes and victims 

yet have never 
Propitiated the savage fear of kings 
With purest blood of noblest hearts; 

whose dew 
Is yet unstained with tears of those who 

wake 
To weep each day the wrongs on which 

it dawns; 
Whose sacred silent air owns yet no 

echo 
Of formal blasphemies; nor impious 

rites 
Wrest man's free worship, from the God 

who loves, 
To the poor worm who envies us his 

love ! 
Receive, thou young of Paradise, 

These exiles from the old and sinful 

world ! 

This glorious clime, this firmament, 

whose lights 
Dart mitigated influence thro' their 

veil 



474 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



Of pale blue atmosphere; whose tears 

keep green 
The pavement of this moist all-feeding 

earth ; 
This vaporous horizon, whose dim round 
Is bastioned by the circumfluous sea, 
Repelling invasion from the sacred 

towers. 
Presses upon me like a dungeon's grate, 
A low dark roof, a damp and narrow 

wall. 
The boundless universe 
Becomes a cell too narrow for the soul 
That owns no master; while the loath- 

liest ward 
Of this wide prison, England, is a nest 
Of cradling peace built on the mountain 

tops, — 
To which the eagle spirits of the free, 
Which range thro' heaven and earth, 

and scorn the storm 
Of time, and gaze upon the light of 

truth. 
Return to brood on thoughts that cannot 

die 
And cannot be repelled. 
Like eaglets floating in the heaven of 

time, 
They soar above their quarry, and shall 

stoop 
Thro' palaces and temples thunder-proof. 



SCENE V. 

Archy. I'll go live under the ivy 
that overgrows the terrace, and count 
the tears shed on its old roots as the 
[wind] plays the song of 

** A widow bird sate mourning 
Upon a wintry bough." 

lSings.'\ 
Heigho ! the lark and the owl ! 

One flies the morning, and one lulls 
the night : — 
Only the nightingale, poor fond soul, 
Sings like the fool through darkness 
and light. 

" A widow bird sate mourning for her 
love 
Upon a wintry bough; 



The frozen wind crept on above, 
The freezing stream below. 

" There was no leaf upon the forest bare, 

No flower upon the ground, 
And little motion in the air 

Except the mill-wheel's sound." 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 

Swift as a spirit hastening to his task 
Of glory and of good, the Sun sprang 

forth 
Rejoicing in his splendor, and the mask 

Of darkness fell from the awakened 

Earth — 
The smokeless altars of the mountain 

snows 
Flamed above crimson clouds, and at 

the birth 

Of light, the Ocean's orison arose, 

To which the birds tempered their matin 

lay. 
All flowers in field or forest which un- 
close 

Their trembling eyelids to the kiss of 

day. 
Swinging their censers in the element. 
With orient incense lit by the new ray 

Burned slow and inconsumably, and sent 
Their odorous sighs up to the smiling 

air; 
And, in succession due, did continent, 

Isle, ocean, and all things that in them 

wear 
The form and character of mortal mould. 
Rise as the Sun their father rose, to 

bear 

Their portion of the toil, which he of 
old 

Took as his own, and then imposed on 
them: 

But I, whom thoughts which must re- 
main untold 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



475 



Had kept as wakeful as the stars that 

gem 
The cone of night, now they were laid 

asleep 
Stretcht my faint limbs beneath the hoary 

stem 

Which an old chestnut flung athwart the 

steep 
Of a green Apennine : before me fled 
The night; behind me rose the day; 

the deep 

Was at my feet, and Heaven above my 

head, 
When a strange trance over my fancy 

grew 
Which was not slumber, for the shade it 

spread 

Was so transparent, that the scene came 

thro' 
As clear as when a veil of light is drawn 
O'er evening hills they glimmer; and I 

knew 

That I had felt the freshness of that 

dawn, 
Bathed in the same cold dew my brow 

and hair, 
And sat as thus upon that slope of 

lawn 

Under the self-same bough, and heard 

as there 
The birds, the fountains and the ocean 

hold 
Sweet talk in music thro' the enamoured 

air. 
And then a vision on my brain was 

rolled. 



As in that trance of wondrous thought 

I lay, 
This was the tenor of my waking 

dream: — 
Methought I sate beside a public way 

Thick strewn with summer dust, and a 

great stream 
Of people there was hurrying to and 

fro, 



Numerous as gnats upon the evening 
gleam, 

All hastening onward, yet none seemed 

to know 
Whither he went, or whence he came 

or why 
He made one of the multitude, and so 

Was borne amid the crowd, as thro' 
the sky 

One of the million leaves of summer's 
bier; 

Old age and youth, manhood and in- 
fancy 

Mixt in one mighty torrent did appear, 
Some flying from the thing they feared, 

and some 
Seeking the object of another's fear; 

And others as with steps towards the 

tomb. 
Pored on the trodden worms that crawled 

beneath. 
And others mournfully within the gloom 

Of their own shadow walkt and called 

it death; 
And some fled from it as it were a 

ghost. 
Half fainting in the aflfliction of vain 

breath : 

But more, with motions which each 

other crost. 
Pursued or shunned the shadows the 

clouds threw. 
Or birds within the noonday ether lost, 

Upon that path where flowers never 
grew, — _ 

And, weary with vain toil and faint for 
thirst. 

Heard not the fountains, whose melodi- 
ous dew 

Out of their mossy cells forever burst; 
Nor felt the breeze which from the 

forest told 
Of grassy paths and wood-lawns inter- 

sperst 



4/6 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



With overarching elms and caverns cold, 
And violet banks where sweet dreams 

brood, but they 
Pursued their serious folly as of old. 

And as I gazed, methought that in the 

way 
The throng grew wilder, as the woods 

of June 
When the south wind shakes the extin- 

guisht day, 

And a cold glare, intenser than the 

noon, 
But icy cold, obscured with blinding 

light 
The sun, as he the stars. Like the 

young moon — 

When on the sunlit limits of the night 
Her white shell trembles amid crimson 

air, 
And whilst the sleeping tempest gathers 

might 

Doth, as the herald of its coming, bear 
The ghost of its dead mother, whose 

dim form 
Bends in dark ether from her infant's 

chair, — 

So came a chariot on the silent storm 
Of its own rushing splendor, and a 

Shape 
So sat within, as one whom years de- 
form. 

Beneath a dusky hood and double cape, 
Crouching within the shadow of a tomb; 
And o'er what seemed the head a cloud- 
like crape 

Was bent, a dun and faint ethereal gloom 
Tempering the light. Upon the chariot 

beam 
A Janus-visaged Shadow did assume 

The guidance of that wonder-winged 

team; 
The shapes which drew it in thick 

lightnings 
Were lost: — I heard alone on the air's 

soft stream 



The music of their ever-moving wings. 
All the four faces of that charioteer 
Had their eyes banded ; little profit 
brings 

Speed in the van and blindness in the 

rear. 
Nor then avail the beams that quench 

the sun 
Or that with banded eyes could pierce 

the sphere 

Of all that is, has been or will be done; 
So ill was the car guided — but it past 
With solemn speed majestically on. 

The crowd gave way, and I arose aghast. 
Or seemed to rise, so mighty was the 

trance. 
And saw, like clouds upon the thunder 

blast. 

The million with fierce song and maniac 

dance 
Raging around — such seemed the jubilee 
As when to greet some conqueror's ad- 
vance 

Imperial Rome poured forth her living 

sea 
From senate-house, and forum, and 

theatre. 
When upon the free 

Had bound a yoke, which soon they 

stoopt to bear. 
Nor wanted here the just similitude 
Of a triumphal pageant, for where'er 

The chariot rolled, a captive multitude 
Was driven; — all those who had grown 

old in power 
Or misery, — all who had their age sub- 
dued 

By action or by suffering, and whose hour 
Was drained to its last sand in weal or 

woe, 
So that the trunk survived both fruit and 

flower; — 

All those whose fame or infamy must 
grow 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



477 



Till the great winter lay the form and 

name 
Of this green earth with them forever 

low; — 

All but the sacred few who could not 
tame 

Their spirits to the conquerors — but as 
soon 

As they had toucht the world with liv- 
ing flame, 

Fled back like eagles to their native 

noon, 
Or those who put aside the diadem 
Of earthly thrones or gems . . . 

Were there, of Athens or Jerusalem, 
Were neither mid the mighty captives 

seen 
Nor mid the ribald crowd that followed 

them, 

Nor those who went before fierce and 

obscene. 
The wild dance maddens in the van, and 

those 
Who lead it — fleet as shadows on the 

green, 

Outspeed the chariot, and without repose 
Mix with each other in tempestuous 

measure 
To savage music, wilder as it grows, 

They, tortured by their agonizing pleas- 
ure, 

Convulst and on the rapid whirlwinds 
spun 

Of that fierce spirit, whose unholy leisure 

Was soothed by mischief since the world 

begun. 
Throw back their heads and loose their 

streaming hair; 
And in their dance round her who dims 

the sun. 

Maidens and youths fling their wild arms 

in air 
As their feet twinkle; they recede, and 

now 
Bending within each other's atmosphere, 



Kindle invisibly — and as they glow. 
Like moths by light attracted and re- 
pelled, 
Oft to their bright destruction come and 
go. 

Till like two clouds into one vale im- 
pelled, 

That shake the mountains when their 
lightnings mingle 

And die in rain — the fiery band which 
held 

Their natures, snaps — while the shock 

still may tingle; 
One falls and then another in the path 
Senseless — nor is the desolation single, 

Yet ere I can say where — the chariot 

hath 
Past over them — nor other trace I find 
But as of foam after the ocean's wrath 

Is spent upon the desert shore ; — behind, 
Old men and women foully disarrayed. 
Shake their gray hairs in the insulting 
wind. 

And follow in the dance, with limbs de- 
cayed. 

Seeking to reach the light which leaves 
them still' 

Farther behind and deeper in the shade. 

But not the less with impotence of will 
They wheel, though ghastly shadows in- 
terpose 
Round them and round each other, and 
fulfil 

Their work, and in the dust from whence 

they rose 
Sink, and corruption veils them as they 

lie. 
And past in these performs what 

in those. 

Struck to the heart by this sad pa- 
geantry. 

Half to myself I said — And what is 
this? 

Whose shape is that within the car? 
And why — 



478 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



I would have added — is all here amiss ? — 
But a voice answered — "Life!" — I 

turned, and knew 
(O Heaven, have mercy on such wretch- 
edness ! ) 

That what I thought was an old root 

which grew 
To strange distortion out of the hillside, 
Was indeed one of those deluded crew, 

And that the grass, which methought 

hung so wide 
And white, was but his thin discolored 

hair, 
And that the holes he vainly sought to 

hide, 

Were or had been eyes: — "If thou 
canst, forbear 

To join the dance, which I had well for- 
borne ! ' ' 

Said the grim Feature (of my thought 
aware). 

" I will unfold that which to this deep 

scorn 
Led me and my companions, a-nd relate 
The progress of the pageant since the 

morn; 

"If thirst of knowledge shall not then 

abate, 
Follow it thou even to the night, but I 
Am weary." — Then like one who with 

the weight 

Of his own words is staggered, wearily 
He paused; and ere he could resume, I 

cried: 
" First, who art thou? " — " Before thy 

memory, 

" I feared, loved, hated, suffered, did 

and died. 
And if the spark with which Heaven lit 

my spirit 
Had been with purer nutriment supplied, 

" Corruption would not now thus much 

inherit 
Of what was once Rousseau, — nor this 

disguise 



Stain that which ought to have disdained 
to wear it; 

" If I have been extinguisht, yet there 

rise 
A thousand beacons from the spark I 

bore " — 
"And who are those chained to the 

car? " — " The wise, 

"The great, the unforgotten, — they 

who wore 
Mitres and helms and crowns, or wreaths 

of light. 
Signs of thought's empire over thought 

— their lore 

" Taught them not this, to know them- 
selves; their might 
Could not repress the mystery within. 
And for the morn of truth they feigned, 
deep night 

" Caught them ere evening." — "Who 

is he with chin 
Upon his breast, and hands crost on his 

chain? " — 
"The child of a fierce hour; he sought 

to win 

" The world, and lost all that it did con- 
tain 

Of greatness, in its hope destroyed; and 
more 

Of fame and peace than virtue's self can 
gain 

" Without the opportunity which bore 
Him on its eagle pinions to the peak 
From which a thousand climbers have 
before 

"Fallen, as Napoleon fell." I felt my 

cheek 
Alter, to see the shadow pass &Way, 
Whose grasp had left the giant world so 

weak. 

That every pygmy kickt it as it lay; 
And much I grieved to think how power 

and will 
In opposition rule our mortal day, 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



479 



And why God made irreconcilable 
Good and the means of good; and for 

despair 
I half disdained mine eyes' desire to fill 

"With the spent vision of the times that 

were 
And scarce have ceast to be. "Dost 

thou behold," 
Said my guide, "those spoilers spoiled, 

Voltaire, 

•' Frederick, and Paul, Catherine, and 

Leopold, 
And hoary anarchs, demagogues, and 

sage — 
names which the world thinks always 

old, 

•' For in the battle Life and they did 
wage, 

She remained conqueror. I was over- 
come 

By my own heart alone, which neither 

** Nor tears, nor infamy, nor now the 

tomb 
Could temper to its object." — "Let 

them pass," 
I cried, "the world and its mysterious 

doom 

" Is not so much more glorious than it 

was. 
That I desire to worship those who drew 
New figures on its false and fragile glass 

"As the old faded." — "Figures ever 

new 
Rise on the bubble, paint them as you 

may; 
We have but thrown, as those before us 

threw, 

" Our shadows on it as it past away. 
But mark how chained to the triumphal 

chair 
The mighty phantoms of an elder day; 

" All that is mortal of great Plato there 
Expiates the joy and woe his master 
knew not; 



The star that ruled his doom was far too 
fair, 

" And life, where long that flower of 

Heaven grew not, 
Conquered that heart by love, which gold, 

or pain. 
Or age, or sloth, or slavery could subdue 

not. 

" And near him walk the twain, 

The tutor and his pupil, whom Dominion 
Followed as tame as vulture in a chain. 

" The world was darkened beneath either 
pinion 

Of him whom from the flock of conquer- 
ors 

Fame singled out for her thunder-bearing 
minion; 

"The other long outlived both woes and 

wars. 
Throned in the thoughts of men, and 

still had kept 
The jealous key of truth's eternal doors. 

" If Bacon's eagle spirit had not leapt 
Like lightning out of darkness — he com- 
pelled 
The Proteus shape of Nature as it slept 

"To wake, and lead him to the caves 

that held 
The treasure of the secrets of its reign. 
See the great bards of elder time, who 

quelled 

" The passions which they sung, as by 

their strain 
May well be known : their living melody 
Tempers its own contagion to the vein 

" Of those who were infected with it — I 
Have suffered what I wrote, or viler 

pain ! 
And so my words have seeds of misery — 

" Even as the deeds of others, not as 

theirs." 
And then he pointed to a company, 



48o 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



Midst whom I quickly recognized the 
heirs 

Of Caesar's crime, from him to Constan- 
tine; 

The anarch chiefs, whose force and mur- 
derous snares 

Had founded many a sceptre-bearing Hne, 
And spread the plague of gold and blood 

abroad : 
And Gregory and John, and men divine, 

Who rose like shadows between man and 

God; 
Till that eclipse, still hanging over 

heaven, 
Was worshipt by the world o'er which 

they strode, 

For the true sun it quencht — "Their 

power was given 
But to destroy," replied the leader: — 

Am one of those who have created, even 

"If it be but a world of agony." — 
"Whence camest thou? and whither 

goest thou? 
How did thy course begin? " I said, 

" and why? 

" Mine eyes are sick of this perpetual 

flow 
Of people, and my heart sick of one sad 

thought — 
Speak!" — "Whence I am, I partly 

seem to know, 

" And how and by what paths I have 
been brought 

To this dread pass, methinks even thou 
mayst guess; — 

Why this should be, my mind can com- 
pass not; 

" Whither the conqueror hurries me still 

less; — 
But follow thou, and from spectator turn 
Actor or victim in this wretchedness, 

"And what thou wouldst be taught I 

then may learn 
From thee. Now listen: — In the April 

prime. 
When all the forest tips began to burn 



" With kindling green, toucht by the 

azure clime 
Of the young season, I was laid asleep 
Under a mountain, which from unknown 

time 

" Had yawned into a cavern, high and 

deep; 
And from it came a gentle rivulet, 
Whose water, like clear air, in its calm 

sweep 

"Bent the soft grass, and kept forever 

wet 
The stems of the sweet flowers, and filled 

the grove 
With sounds, which whoso hears must 

needs forget 

" All pleasure and all pain, all hate and 

love. 
Which they had known before that hour 

of rest; 
A sleeping mother then would dream 

not of 

" Her only child who died upon the 

breast 
At eventide — a king would mourn no 

more 
The crown of which his brows were dis- 

possest 

" When the sun lingered o'er his ocean 
floor. 

To gild his rival's new prosperity. 

Thou wouldst forget thus vainly to de- 
plore 

" Ills, which if ills can find no cure from 

thee, 
The thought of which no other sleep will 

quell. 
Nor other music blot from memory, 

" So sweet and deep is the oblivious 

spell; 
And whether life had been before that 

sleep 
The heaven which I imagine, or a hell 

" Like this harsh world in which I wake 
to weep, 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



481 



I know not. I arose, and for a space 
The scene of woods and waters seemed 
to keep, 

"Tho' it was now broad day, a gentle 

trace 
Of light diviner than the common sun 
Sheds on the common earth, and all the 

place 

*' Was filled with magic sounds woven 

into one 
Oblivious melody, confusing sense 
Amid the gliding waves and shadows 

dun; 

"And, as I lookt, the bright omni- 
presence 

Of morning thro' the orient cavern 
flowed. 

And the sun's image radiantly intense 

*' Burned on the waters of the well that 

glowed 
Like gold, and threaded all the forest's 

maze 
With winding paths of emerald fire; 

there stood 

" Amid the sun, as he amid the blaze 
Of his own glory, on the vibrating 
Floor of the fountain, paved with flash- 
ing rays, 

*' A Shape all light, which with one hand 

did fling 
Dew on the earth, as if she were the 

dawn, 
And the invisible rain did ever sing 

"A silver music on the mossy lawn; 
And still before me on the dusky grass, 
Iris her many-colored scarf had drawn: 

" In her right hand she bore a crystal 

glass. 
Mantling with bright Nepenthe ; the 

fierce splendor 
Fell from her as she moved under the 

mass 

**0f the deep cavern, and with palms 
so tender, 



Their tread broke not the mirror of its 

billow. 
Glided along the river, and did bend her 

*' Head under the dark boughs, till like 

a willow, 
Her fair hair swept the bosom of the 

stream 
That whispered with delight to be its 

pillow. 

" As one enamoured is upborne in dream 
O'er lily-paven lakes mid silver mist, 
To wondrous music, so this shape might 
seem 

"Partly to tread the waves with feet 

which kist 
The dancing foam; partly to glide along 
The air which roughened the moist 
amethyst, 

" Or the faint morning beams that fell 

among 
The trees, or the soft shadows of the 

trees; 
And her feet, ever to the ceaseless song 

"Of leaves, and winds, and waves, and 

birds, and bees. 
And falling drops, moved in a measure 

new 
Yet sweet, as on the summer evening 

breeze, 

"Up from the lake a shape of golden 

dew 
Between two rocks, athwart the rising 

moon. 
Dances i' the wind, where never eagle 

flew; 

"And still her feet, no less than the 

sweet tune 
To which they moved, seemed as they 

moved to blot 
The thoughts of him who gazed on them; 

and soon 

" All that was, seemed as if it had been 
not; 

And all the gazer's mind was strewn be- 
neath 



482 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



Her feet like embers; and she, thought 
by thought, 

"Trampled its sparks into the dust of 

death; 
As day upon the threshold of the east 
Treads out the lamps of night, until the 

breath 

"Of darkness re-illumine even the least 
Of heaven's living eyes — like day she 

came, 
Making the night a dream; and ere she 

ceast 

" To move, as one between desire and 

shame 
Suspended, I said — If, as it doth seem. 
Thou comest from the realm without a 

name, 

• " Into this valley of perpetual dream, 
Show whence I came, and where I am, 

and why — 
Pass not away upon the passing stream. 

"Arise and quench thy thirst, was her 

reply. 
And as a shut lily stricken by the wand 
Of dewy morning's vital alchemy, 

" I rose; and, bending at her sweet com- 
mand, 

Toucht with faint lips the cup she 
raised. 

And suddenly my brain became as sand 

"Where the first wave had more than 

half erased 
The track of deer on desert Labrador; 
Whilst the wolf, from which they fled 

amazed, 

"Leaves his stamp visibly upon the 

shore. 
Until the second bursts; — so on my sight 
Burst a new vision, never seen before, 

" And the fair shape waned in the com- 

. ing light, 
As veil by veil the silent splendor drops 
From Lucifer, amid the chrysolite 



" Of sunrise, ere it tinge the mountain 

tops; 
And as the presence of that fairest 

planet, 
Altho' unseen, is felt by one who 

hopes 

" That his day's path may end as he be- 
gan it. 

In that star's smile, whose light is like 
the scent 

Of a jonquil when evening breezes fan 
it, 

"Or the soft note in which his dear 
lament 

The Brescian shepherd breathes, or the 
caress 

That turned his weary slumber to con- 
tent; 

" So knew I in that light's severe excess 
The presence of that shape which on the 

stream 
Moved, as I moved along the wilderness 

" More dimly than a day-appearing 

dream. 
The ghost of a forgotten form of sleep; 
A light of heaven, whose half-extin- 

guisht beam 

"Thro' the sick day in which we 

wake to weep, 
Glimmers, forever sought, forever lost; 
So did that shape its obscure tenor keep 

" Beside my path, as silent as a ghost; 
But the new Vision, and the cold bright 

car. 
With solemn speed and stunning music, 

crost 

"The forest, and as if from some dread 

war 
Triumphantly returning, the loud million 
Fiercely extolled the fortune of her star. 

"A moving arch of victory, the ver- 
milion 
And green and azure plumes of Iris had 
Built high over her wind-winged pavilion, 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



483 



" And underneath ethereal glory clad 
'\\\: wilderness, and far before her flew 
The tempest of the splendor, which for- 
bade 

" Shadow to fall from leaf and stone; 

the crew 
Seemed in that light, like atomies to 

dance 
Within a sunbeam; — some upon the new 

" Embroidery of flowers, that did en- 
hance 
The grassy vesture of the desert, played. 
Forgetful of the chariot's swift advance; 

"Others stood gazing, till within the 

shade 
Of the great mountain its light left them 

dim; 
Others outspeeded it; and others made 

"Circles around it, like the clouds that 

swim 
Round the high moon in a bright sea of 

air; 
And more did follow, with exulting 

hymn, 

" The chariot and the captives fettered 

there : — 
But all like bubbles on an eddying flood 
Fell into the same track at last, and 

were 

"Borne onward. I among the multi- 
tude 

Was swept — me, sweetest flowers de- 
layed not long; 

Me, not the shadow nor the solitude; 

" Me, not that falling stream's Lethean 

song; 
Me, not the phantom of that early form, 
Which moved upon its motion — but 

among 

"The thickest billows of that living 

storm 
I plunged, and bared my bosom to the 

clime 
Of that cold light, whose airs too soon 

deform. 



" Before the chariot had begun to climb 
The opposing steep of that mysterious 

dell. 
Behold a wonder worthy of the rhyme 

" Of him who from the lowest depths of 

hell. 
Thro' every paradise and through all 

glory. 
Love led serene, and who returned to 

tell 

"The words of hate and awe; the won- 
drous story 

How all things are transfigured except 
Love ; 

For deaf as is a sea, which wrath makes 
hoary, 

"The world can hear not the sweet 

notes that move 
The sphere whose light is melody to 

lovers — 
A wonder worthy of his rhyme. The 

grove 

" Grew dense with shadows to its inmost 

covers, 
The earth was gray with phantoms, and 

the air 
Was peopled with dim forms, as when 

there hovers 

"A flock of vampire-bats before the 
glare 

Of the tropic sun, bringing, ere even- 
ing, 

Strange night upon some Indian isle; — 
thus were 

"Phantoms diffused around; and some 
did fling 

Shadows of shadows, yet unlike them- 
selves, 

Behind them; some like eaglets on the 
wing 

"Were lost in the white day; others 

like elves 
Danced in a thousand unimagined 

shapes 
Upon the sunny streams and grassy 

shelves; 



484 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



" And others sate chattering like restless 

apes 
On vulgar hands, . . . 
Some made a cradle of the ermined capes 

"Of kingly mantles; some across the 

tiar 
Of pontiffs sate like vultures; others 

played 
Under the crown which girt with empire 

" A baby's or an idiot's brow, and made 
Their nests in it. The old anatomies 
Sate hatching their bare broods under the 
shade 

"Of demon wings, and laught from 

their dead eyes 
To reassume the delegated power, 
Arrayed in which those worms did mon- 

archize, 

"Who made this earth their charnel. 

Others more 
Humble, like falcons, sate upon the fist 
Of common men, and round their heads 

did soar; 

"Or like small gnats and flies, as thick 
as mist 

On evening marshes, thronged about the 
brow 

Of lawyers, statesmen, priest and theo- 
rist; — 

"And others, like discolored flakes of 

snow 
On fairest bosoms and the sunniest hair. 
Fell, and were melted by the youthful 

glow 

"Which they extinguisht; and, like 

tears, they were 
A veil to those from whose faint lids they 

rained 
In drops of sorrow. I became aware 

"Of whence those forms proceeded 

which thus stained 
The track in which we moved. After 

brief space. 
From every form the beauty slowly 

waned; 



" From every firmest limb and fairest 

face 
The strength and freshness fell like dust, 

and left 
The action and the shape without the 

grace 

" Of life. The marble brow of youth 

was cleft 
With care; and in those eyes where once 

hope shone. 
Desire, like a lioness bereft 

"Of her last cub, glared ere it died', 

each one 
Of that great crowd sent forth incessantly 
These shadows, numerous as the dead 

leaves blown 

" In autumn evening from a poplar-tree. 
Each like himself and like each other 

were 
At first; but some distorted seemed to be 

" Obscure clouds, moulded by the casual 

air; 
And of this stuff the car's creative ray 
Wrought all the busy phantoms that 

were there, 

" As the sun shapes the clouds; thus on 
the way 

Mask after mask fell from the counte- 
nance 

And form of all; and long before the 
day 

"Was old, the joy which waked like 

heaven's glance 
The sleepers in the oblivious valley, 

died; 
And some grew weary of the ghastly 

dance, 

"And fell, as I have fallen, by the way- 
side; — 

Those soonest from whose forms most 
shadows past. 

And least of strength and beauty did 
abide. 

"Then, what is life? I cried." 



EARLY POEMS. 



485 



CANCELLED OPENING OF 
"THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE." 

Out of the eastern shadow of the Earth, 
Amid the clouds upon its margin gray 
Scattered by Night to swathe in its bright 
birth 

In gold and fleecy snow the infant 
Day, 
The glorious Sun uprose : beneath his 
light. 
The earth and all . . . 



EARLY POEMS. 

STANZA, WRITTEN AT 
BRACKNELL. 

Thy dewy looks sink in my breast; 

Thy gentle words stir poison there; 
Thou hast disturbed the only rest 

That was the portion of despair ! 
Subdued to Duty's hard control, 

I could have borne my wayward lot ; 
The chains that bind this ruined soul 

Had cankered then — but crusht 
not. 



STANZAS.— April, 1814. 

Away ! the moor is dark beneath the 
moon, 
Rapid clouds have drunk the last pale 
beam of even : 
Away ! the gathering winds will call the 
darkness soon. 
And profoundest midnight shroud the 
serene lights of heaven. 

Pause not ! The time is past ! Every 
voice cries. Away ! 
Tempt not with one last tear thy friend's 
ungentle mood: 
Thy lover's eye, so glazed and cold, 
dares not entreat thy stay: 
Duty and dereliction guide thee back 
to solitude. 



Away, away ! to thy sad and silent home; 
Pour bitter tears on its desolated hearth ; 
Watch the dim shades as like ghosts they 
go and come. 
And complicate strange webs of mel- 
ancholy mirth. 

The leaves of wasted autumn woods shall 
float around thine head: 
The blooms of dewy spring shall 
gleam beneath thy feet : 
But thy soul or this world must fade in 
the frost that binds the dead. 
Ere midnight's frown and morning's 
smile, ere thou and peace may 
meet. 

The cloud — shadows of midnight possess 
their own repose, 
For the weary winds are silent, or the 
moon is in the deep : 
Some respite to its turbulence unresting 
ocean knows; 
Whatever moves, or toils, or grieves, 
hath its appointed sleep. 

Thou in the grave shalt rest — yet till the 
phantoms fiee 
Which that house and heath and garden 
made dear to thee erewhile. 
Thy remembrance, and repentance, and 
deep musings are not free 
From the music of two voices and the 
light of one sweet smile. 



TO MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT 
GODWIN. 



Mine eyes were dim with tears unshed; 

Yes, I was firm — thus wert not thou ; — 
My baffled looks did fear yet dread 

To meet thy looks —I could not know 
How anxiously they sought to shine 
With soothing pity upon mine. 

II. 

To sit and curb the soul's mute rage 
Which preys upon itself alone; 

To curse the life which is the cage 

Of fettered grief that dares not groan, 



486 



EARLY POEMS. 



Hiding from many a careless eye 
The scorned load of agony. 

III. 

Whilst thou alone, then not regarded, 
The thou alone should be, 

To spend years thus, and be rewarded, 
As thou, sweet love, requited me 

When none were near — Oh ! I did wake 

From torture for that moment's sake. 

IV. 

Upon my heart thy accents sweet 
Of peace and pity fell like dew 

On fiowers half dead; — thy lips did meet 
Mine tremblingly; thy dark eyes threw 

Their soft persuasion on my brain, 

Charming away its dream of pain. 



We are not happy, sweet ! our state 
Is strange and full of doubt and fear; 

More need of words that ills abate; — 
Reserve or censure come not near 

Our sacred friendship, lest there be 

No solace left for thee and me. 

VI. 

Gentle and good and mild thou art, 
Nor can I live if thou appear 

Aught but thyself, or turn thine heart 
Away from me, or stoop to wear 

The mask of scorn, altho' it be 

To hide the love thou feel'st for me. 



TO 



Yet look on me — take not thine eyes 
away. 
Which feed upon the love within mine 
own. 
Which is indeed but the reflected ray 
Of thine own beauty from my spirit 

thrown. 
Yet speak to me — thy voice is as the 
tone 
Of my heart's echo, and I think I hear 
That thou yet lovest me; yet thou 
alone 



Like one before a mirror, without care 

Of aught but thine own features, imaged 
there; 

And yet I wear out life in watching 
thee; 
A toil so sweet at times, and thou in- 
deed 

Art kind when I am sick, and pity me. 



MUTABILITY. 

We are as clouds that veil the midnight 
moon; 
How restlessly they speed, and gleam, 
and quiver. 
Streaking the darkness radiantly ! — yet 
soon 
Night closes round, and they are lost 
forever; 

Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant 
strings 
Give various response to each varying 
blast. 
To whose frail frame no second motion 
brings 
One mood or modulation like the last. 

We rest. A dream has power to poi- 
son sleep; 
We rise. One wandering thought 
pollutes the day; 
We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or 
weep; 
Embrace fond woe or cast our cares 
away: 

It is the same ! For, be it joy or sorrow, 
The path of its departure still is free : 

Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his 
morrow; 
Naught may endure but Mutability. 



ON DEATH. 

There is no work, nor device, nor knowl- 
edge, NOR WISDOM, IN THE GRAVE, WHITHER 

THOU GOEST. Ecclesiastes. 

The pale, the cold, and the moony smile 
Which the meteor beam of a starless 
night 



EARLY POEMS. 



487 



Sheds on a lonely and sea-girt isle, 
Ere the dawning of morn's undoubted 

light, 
Is the flame of life so fickle and wan 
That flits round our steps till their strength 

is gone. 

O man ! hold thee on in courage of soul 
Thro' the stormy shadesof thy worldly 

way, 
And the billows of cloud that around 

thee roll 
Shall sleep in the light of a wondrous 

day, 
Where hell and heaven shall leave thee 

free 
To the universe of destiny. 

This world is the nurse of all we know. 
This world is the mother of all we feel, 

And the coming of death is a fearful blow 
To a brain unencompast with nerves 
of steel; 

When all that we know, or feel, or see, 

Shall pass like an unreal mystery. 

The secret things of the grave are there. 
Where all but this frame must surely 
be, 
Tho' the fine-wrought eye and the 
wondrous ear 
No longer will live to hear or to see 
All that is great and all that is strange 
In the boundless realm of unending 
change. 

Who telleth a tale of unspeaking death? 
Who lifteth the veil of what is to come? 
Who painteth the shadows that are be- 
neath 
The wide-winding caves of the peopled 
tomb? 
Or uniteth the hopes of what shall be 
With the fears and the love for that 
which we see? 

A SUMMER EVENING CHURCH- 
YARD. 

Lechlade, Gloucestershire. 

The wind has swept from the wide at- 
mosphere 



Each vapor that obscured the sunset's 

ray; 
And pallid Evening twines its beaming 

hair 
In duskier braids around the languid 

eyes of Day: 
Silence and Twilight, unbeloved of men, 
Creep hand in hand from yon obscurest 

glen. 

They breathe their spells towards the de- 
parting day. 

Encompassing the earth, air, stars, and 
sea; 

Light, sound, and motion own the potent 
sway. 

Responding to the charm with its own 
mystery. 

The winds are still, or the dry church- 
tower grass 

Knows not their gentle motions as they 
pass. 

Thou too, aerial Pile ! whose pinnacles 
Point from one shrine like pyramids of 

fire, 
Obeyest in silence their sweet solemn 

spells, 
Clothing in hues of heaven thy dim and 

distant spire, 
Around whose lessening and invisible 

height 
Gather among the stars the clouds of 

night. 

The dead are sleeping in their sepulchres : 

And, mouldering as they sleep, a thrill- 
ing sound 

Half sense, half thought, among the 
darkness stirs. 

Breathed from their wormy beds all liv- 
ing things around, 

And mingling with the still night and 
mute sky 

Its awful hush is felt inaudibly. 

Thus solemnized and softened, death is 

mild 
And terrorless as this serenest night: 
Here could I hope, like some inquiring 

child 
Sporting on graves, that death did hide 

from human sight 



488 



EARLY POEMS. 



Sweet secrets, or beside its breathless 

sleep 
That loveliest dreams perpetual watch did 

keep. 

TO COLERIDGE. 

AAKPY2I AI0I2n nOTMON 'AHOTMON- 

Oh ! there are spirits of the air, 
And genii of the evening breeze, 

And gentle ghosts, with eyes as fair 
As star-beams among twilight trees: 

Such lovely ministers to meet 

Oft hast thou turned from men thy lonelv 
feet. ^ 

With mountain winds, and babbling 
springs. 
And moonlight seas, that are the voice 
Of these inexplicable things 

Thou didst hold commune, and rejoice 
When they did answer thee; but they 
Cast, like a worthless boon, thy love 
away. 

And thou hast sought in starry eyes 
Beams that were never meant for 
thine, 
Another's wealth:— tame sacrifice 

To a fond faith ! still dost thou pine? 
Sdll dost thou hope that greeting hands, 
Voice, looks, or lips, may answer thy 
demands? 



Ah! wherefore didst thou build thine 
hope 
On the false earth's inconstancy? 
Did thine own mind afford no scope 

Of love, or moving thoughts to thee? 
That natural scenes or human smiles 
Could steal the power to wind thee in 
their wiles. 

Yes, all the faithless smiles are fled 
Whose falsehood left thee broken- 
hearted; 
The glory of the moon is dead; 

Night's ghosts and dreams have now 
departed; 
Thine own soul still is true to thee, 
But changed to a foul fiend 'thro' 
misery. 



This fiend, whose ghastly presence ever 
Beside thee like thy shadow hangs, 

Dream not to chase; —the mad endea- 
vor 
Would scourge thee to severer pangs. 

Be as thou art. Thy settled fate. 

Dark as it is, all change would aggravate. 

TO WORDSWORTH. 

Poet of Nature, thou hast wept to know 
That things depart which never may 

return : 
Childhood and youth, friendship and 

love's first glow. 
Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving 

thee to mourn. 
These common woes I feel. One loss is 

mine 
Which thou too feel'st, yet I alone de- 
plore. 
Thou wert as a lone star, whose light 

did shine 
On some frail bark in winter's midnight 

roar: 
Thou hast like to a rock-built refuge 

stood 
Above the blind and battling multitude: 
In honored poverty thy voice did weave 
Songs consecrate to truth and liberty, — 
Deserting these, thou leavest me to 

grieve. 
Thus having been, that thou shouldst 
cease to be. 



FEELINGS OF A REPUBLICAN 
ON THE FALL OF BONAPARTE. 

I HATED thee, fallen tyrant ! I did groan 

To think that a most unambitious slave, 

Like thou, shouldst dance and revel on 
the grave 

Of Liberty. Thou mightst have built 
thy throne 

Where it had stood even now: thou 
didst prefer 

A frail and bloody pomp which time has 
swept 

In fragments towards oblivion. Mas- 
sacre, 

For this I prayed, would on thy sleep 
have crept. 



k 



NOTE ON THE EARLY POEMS. 



489 



Treason and Slavery, Rapine, Fear, and 

Lust, 
And stifled thee, their minister. I know 
Too late, since thou and France are in 

the dust. 
That virtue owns a more eternal foe 
Than force or fraud: old Custom, legal 

Crime, 
And bloody Faith the foulest birth of 

time. 

LINES. 



The cold earth slept below. 
Above the cold sky shone; 
And all around, with a chilling sound, 
From caves of ice and fields of snow, 
The breath of night like death did 
flow 
Beneath the sinking moon. 



The wintry hedge was black, 
The green grass was not seen, 
The birds did rest on the bare thorn's 
breast, 
Whose roots, beside the pathway track. 
Had bound their folds o'er many a 
crack, 
Which the frost had made between. 

III. 

Thine eyes glowed in the glare 
Of the moon's dying light; 
As a fen-fire's beam on a sluggish stream. 
Gleams dimly, so the moon shone 

there, 
And it yellowed the strings of thy 
raven hair, 
That shook in the wind of night. 

IV. 

The moon made thy lips pale, be- 
loved — 
The wind made thy bosom chill — 
The night did shed on thy dear head 
Its frozen dew, and thou didst lie 
Where the bitter breath of the naked 
sky 
Might visit thee at will. 



NOTE ON THE EARLY POEMS, BY 
MRS. SHELLEY. 

The remainder of Shelley's Poems 
will be arranged in the order in which 
they were written. Of course, mistakes 
will occur in placing some of the shorter 
ones; for, as I have said, many of these 
were thrown aside, and I never saw them 
till I had the misery of looking over his 
writings after the hand that traced them 
was dust; and some were in the hands 
of others, and I never saw them till now. 
The subjects of the poems are often to 
me an unerring guide; but on other oc- 
casions I can only guess, by finding them 
in the pages of the same manuscript book 
that contains poems with the date of 
whose composition I am fully conversant. 
In the present arrangement all his poeti- 
cal translations will be placed together 
at the end. 

The loss of his early papers prevents 
my being able to give any of the poetry 
of his boyhood. Of the few I give as 
Early Poems, the greater part were pub- 
lished with Alastor ; some of them were 
written previously, some at the same 
period. The poem beginning " Oh, there 
are spirits in the air" was addressed in 
idea to Coleridge, whom he never knew; 
and at whose character he could only 
guess imperfectly, through his writings, 
and accounts he heard of him from some 
who knew him well. He regarded his 
change of opinions as rather an act of 
will than conviction, and believed that 
in his inner heart he would be haunted 
by what Shelley considered the better and 
holier aspirations of his youth. The 
summer evening that suggested to him 
the poem written in the churchyard of 
Lechlade occurred during his voyage up 
the Thames in 181 5. He had been ad- 
vised by a physician to live as much as 
possible in the open air; and a fortnight 
of a bright warm July was spent in tra- 
cing the Thames to its source. He never 
spent a season more tranquilly than the 
summer of 18 1 5. He had just recovered 
from a severe pulmonary attack; the 
weather was warm and pleasant. He 



490 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1816. 



lived near Windsor Forest; and his life 
was spent under its shades or on the water, 
meditating subjects for verse. Hitherto, 
he had chiefly aimed at extending his po- 
litical doctrines, and attempted so to do 
by appeals in prose essays to the people, 
exhorting them to claim their rights; but 
he had now begun to feel that the time 
for action was not ripe in England, and 
that the pen was the only instrument 
wherewith to prepare the way for better 
things. 

In the scanty journals kept during those 
years I find a record of the books that 
Shelley read during several years. Dur- 
ing the years of 18 14 and 181 5 the list is 
extensive. It includes, in Greek, Homer, 
Hesiod, Theocritus, the histories of Thu- 
cydides and Herodotus, and Diogenes 
Laertius. In Latin, Petronius, Sueto- 
nius, some of the works of Cicero, a large 
proportion of those of Seneca and Livy. 
In English, Milton's Poems, Words- 
worth's "Excursion," Southey's "Ma- 
doc" and "Thalaba," Locke "On 
Human Understanding," Bacon's "No- 
vum Organum. In Italian, Ariosto, 
Tasso, and Alfieri. In French, the 
" Reveries d'un Solitaire" of Rousseau. 
To these may be added several modern 
books of travels. He read few novels. 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1816. 
THE SUNSET. 

There late was One within whose subtle 

being. 
As light and wind within some delicate 

cloud 
That fades amid the blue noon's burning 

sky. 
Genius and death contended. None 

may know 
The sweetness of the joy which made his 

breath 
Fail, like the trances of the summer air, 
When, with the Lady of his love, who 

then 
First knew the unreserve of mingled 

being, 
He walked along the pathway of a field 



Which to the east a hoar wood shadowed 

o'er, 
But to the west was open to the sky. 
There now the sun had sunk, but lines 

of gold 
Hung on the ashen clouds, and on the 

points 
Of the far level grass and nodding flowers 
And the old dandelion's hoary beard, 
And, mingled with the shades of twi- 
light, lay 
On the brown massy woods ; — and in the 

east 
The broad and burning moon lingeringly 

rose 
Between the black trunks of the crowded 

trees, 
While the faint stars were gathering 

overhead. — 
"Is it not strange, Isabel," said the 

youth, 
"I never saw the sun? We will walk 

here 
To-morrow; thou shalt look on it with 

me." 

That night the youth and lady mingled 
lay 

In love and sleep — but when the morn- 
ing came 

The lady found her lover dead and 
cold. 

Let none believe that God in mercy gave 

That stroke. The lady died not, nor 
grew wild, 

But year by year lived on — in truth I 
think 

Her gentleness and patience and sad 
smiles, 

And that she did not die, but lived to 
tend 

Her aged father, were a kind of mad- 
ness, 

If madness 't is to be unlike the world. 

For but to see her were to read the tale 

Woven by some subtlest bard, to make 
hard hearts 

Dissolve away in wisdom-working 
grief; — 

Her eyes were black and lustreless and 
wan: 

Her eyelashes were worn away with 
tears, 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1816. 



491 



Her lips and cheeks were like things 

dead — so pale; 
Her hands were thin, and thro' their 

wandering veins 
And weak articulations might be seen 
Day's ruddy light. The tomb of thy 

dead self 
Which one vext ghost inhabits, night 

and day, 
Is all, lost child, that now remains of 

thee! 

"Inheritor of more than earth can 

give, 
Passionless calm and silence unreproved, 
Whether the dead find, oh, not sleep ! 

but rest. 
And are the uncomplaining things they 

seem. 
Or live, or drop in the deep sea of 

Love ; 
Oh, that like thine, mine epitaph were 

— Peace! " 
This was the only moan she ever made. 

HYMN TO INTELLECTUAL 
BEAUTY. 



The awful shadow of some unseen 
Power 
Floats tho' unseen amongst us, — 

visiting 
This various world with as inconstant 
wing 
As summer winds that creep from flower 

to flower, — 
Like moonbeams that behind some piny 
mountain shower, 
It visits with inconstant glance 
Each human heart and countenance; 
Like hues and harmonies of evening, — 
Like clouds in starlight widely 

spread, — 
Like memory of music fled, — 
Like aught that for its grace may be 
Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery. 

11. 

Spirit of Beauty, that dost consecrate 
With thine own hues all thou dost 
shine upon 



Of human thought or form, — where 
art thou gone? 
Why dost thou pass away and leave our 

state, 
This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and 
desolate? 
Ask why the sunlight not forever 
Weaves rainbows o'er yon mountain 
river. 
Why aught should fail and fade that once 
is shown, 
Why fear and dream and death and 

birth 
Cast on the daylight of this earth 
Such gloom, — why man has such a 
scope 
For love and hate, despondency and 
hope? 

III. 

No voice from some sublimer world hath 
ever 
To sage or poet these responses given — 
Therefore the names of Demon, Ghost, 
and Heaven, 
Remain the records of their vain endeavor. 
Frail spells — whose uttered charm might 
not avail to sever. 
From all we hear and all we see, 
Doubt, chance, and mutability. 
Thy light alone — like mist o'er moun- 
tains driven, 
Or music by the night wind sent. 
Thro' strings of some still instru- 
ment. 
Or moonlight on a midnight stream. 
Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet 
dream. 

IV. 

Love, Hope, and Self-esteem, like clouds 
depart 
And come, for some uncertain mo- 
ments lent, 
Man were immortal, and omnipotent, 
Didst thou, unknown and awful as thou 

art. 
Keep with thy glorious train firm state 
within his heart. 
Thou messenger of sympathies, 
That wax and wane in lovers' eyes — 
Thou — that to human thought art nour- 
ishment. 



492 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1816. 



Like darkness to a dying flame ! 
Depart not as thy shadow came, 
Depart not — lest the grave should be, 
Like life and fear, a dark reality. 



While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and 
sped 
Thro' many a listening chamber, cave 

and ruin, 
And starlight wood, with fearful steps 
pursuing 
Hopes of high talk with the departed 

dead. 
I called on poisonous names with which 
our youth is fed; 
I was not heard — I saw them not — 
When musing deeply on the lot 
Of life, at the sweet time when winds 
are wooing 
All vital things that wake to bring 
News of birds and blossoming, — 
Sudden, thy shadow fell on me; 
I shriekt, and claspt my hands in 
ecstasy ! 

VI. 

I vowed that I would dedicate my pow- 
ers 
To thee and thine — have I not kept 

the vow? 
With beating heart and streaming eyes, 
even now 
I call the phantoms of a thousand hours 
Each from his voiceless grave : they have 
in visioned bowers 
Of studious zeal or love's delight 
Outvvatcht with me the envious 
night — 
They know that never joy illumed my 
brow 
Unlinkt with hope that thou wouldst 

free 
This world from its dark slavery, 
That thou — O awful Loveliness, 
Wouldst give whate'er these words can- 
not express. 

VII. 

The day becomes more solemn and se- 
rene 
When noon is past — there is a har- 
mony 



not 



In autumn, and a lustre in its sky, 
Which thro' the summer is not heard ori 

seen, 
As if it could not be, as if it had 

been ! | 

Thus let thy power, which like the | 
truth i 

Of nature on my passive youth ' j 
Descended, to my onward life supply \ 
Its calm — to one who worships thee. 
And every form containing thee, 
Whom, Spirit fair, thy spells did 
bind 
To fear himself, and love all human kind. 



MONT BLANC. 

LINES WRITTEN IN THE VALE OF 
CHAMOUNI. 

I. 

The everlasting universe of things 
Flows thro' the mind, and rolls its rapid 

waves. 
Now dark — now glittering — now re- 
flecting gloom — 
Now lending splendor, where from secret 

springs 
The source of human thought its tribute 

brings 
Of waters, — with a sound but half its 

own. 
Such as a feeble brook will oft assume 
In the wild woods, among the mountains 

lone, 
Where waterfalls around it leap for ever, 
Where woods and winds contend, and a 

vast river 
Over its rocks ceaselessly bursts and 

raves. 

II. 

Thus thou. Ravine of Arve — dark, deep 

Ravine — 
Thou many-colored, many-voiced vale, 
Over whose pines, and crags, and caverns 

sail 
Fast cloud-shadows and sunbeams : awful 

scene, 
Where Power in likeness of the Arv^ 

comes down 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1816. 



493 



From the ice gulfs that gird his secret 
throne, 

Bursting thro' these dark mountains Hke 
the flame 

Of lightning thro' the tempest; — thou 
dost lie, 

Thy giant brood of pines around thee 
clinging. 

Children of elder time, in whose devo- 
tion 

The chainless winds still come and ever 
came 

To drink their odors, and their mighty 
swinging 

To hear — an old and solemn harmony; 

Thine earthly rainbows stretcht across 
the sweep 

Of the ethereal waterfall, whose veil 

Robes some unsculptured image; the 
strange sleep 

"Which when the voices of the desert fail 

Wraps all in its own deep eternity; — 

Thy caverns echoing to the Arve's com- 
motion, 

A loud, lone sound no other sound can 
tame; 

Thou art pervaded with that ceaseless 
motion, 

Thou art the path of that unresting 
sound — 

Dizzy Ravine ! and when I gaze on thee 

I seem as in a trance sublime and strange 

To muse on my own separate fantasy, 

My own, my human mind, which pas- 
sively 

Now renders and receives fast influen- 
cings. 

Holding an unremitting interchange 

With the clear universe of things around; 
One legion of wild thoughts, whose wan- 
dering wings 
Now float above thy darkness, and now 

rest 
Where that or thou art no unbidden 

guest, 
In the still cave of the witch Poesy, 
Seeking among the shadows that pass by 
Ghosts of all things that are, some shade 

of thee. 
Some phantom, some faint image; till 

the breast 
From which they fled recalls them, thou 
art there ! 



III. 

Some say that gleams of a remoter 

world 
Visit the soul in sleep, — that death is 

slumber. 
And that its shapes the busy thoughts 

outnumber 
Of those who wake and live. — I look 

on high; 
Has some unknown omnipotence unfurled 
The veil of life or death? or do I lie 
In dream, and does the mightier world 

of sleep 
Spread far around and inaccessibly 
Its circles? For the very spirit fails, 
Driven like a homeless cloud from steep 

to steep 
That vanishes among the viewless gales ! 
Far, far above, piercing the infinite sky, 
Mont Blanc appears, — still, snowy, and 

serene — 
Its subject mountains their unearthly 

forms 
Pile around it, ice and rock; broad vales 

between 
Of frozen floods, unfathomable deeps. 
Blue as the overhanging heaven, that 

spread 
And wind among the accumulated steeps; 
A desert peopled by the storms alone, 
Save when the eagle brings some hunt- 
er's bone. 
And the wolf tracks her there — how 

hideously 
Its shapes are heapt around! rude, bare, 

and high. 
Ghastly, and scarred, and riven. — Is 

this the scene 
Where the old Earthquake-daemon taught 

her young 
Ruin? Were these their toys? or did a 

sea 
Of fire, envelop once this silent snow? 
None can reply — all seems eternal now. 
The wilderness has a mysterious tongue 
Which teaches awful doubt, or faith so 

mild. 
So solemn, so serene, that man may be 
But for such faith with Nature recon- 
ciled; 
Thou hast a voice, great Mountain, to 

repeal 



494 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1816. 



Large codes of fraud and woe; not un- 
derstood 

By all, but which the wise, and great 
and good ' 

Interpret, or make felt, or deeply feel. 

IV. 

The fields, the lakes, the forests, and the 

streams, 
Ocean, and all the living things that 

dwell 
Within the daedal earth; lightning and 

rain, 



Its destined path, or in the mangled soil 
i5ranchless and shattered stand; the 

rocks, drawn down 
From yon remotest waste, have over- 
thrown 
The limits of the dead and living world, 
Never to be reclaimed. The dwelling- 
place * 
Of insects, beasts, and birds, becomes 

Its spoil; 
Their food and their retreat for ever 

gone. 
So much of life and joy is lost. The 
race 



Earthquake, and fiery flood, and hurri- Of r^J^t,. far in dread; his work and 



The torpor of the year when feeble 

dreams 
Visit the hidden buds, or dreamless sleep 
Holds every future leaf and flower ;-— 

the bound 
With which from that detested trance 

they leap; 
The works and ways of man, their death 

and birth, 



dwelling 
Vanish, like smoke before the tempest's 

stream, 
And their place is not known. Below 

vast caves ' 

Shine in the rushing torrents' restless 

gleam. 
Which from those secret chasms a tu- 

mult welling 

T>ff k'' ^\ '''^'^' """"^ °"^ ^^J^stic River, 



And that of him and all that his mav be- Th h!? I 1 "^.^ °."^ m^)^^i\c River, 
All things that move and breaX/wrth C.lf '^'°' '^ distant lands, 

toil and sound T?^n •- 1 j 

Are born and die; revolve, subside, and B^th'eV,^:tTv^r.7r e^ ^g 
Power dwells apart in its tranquillity ^''* 

Remote, serene, and inaccessible : 

And this, the naked countenance of 

earth. 
On which I gaze, even these primeval 

mountains 



V. 



Mont Blanc yet gleams on high:— the 

power is there. 
The still and solemn power of many 

Teach .he^adve^^ng nrind. The glaciers I And .a',f ^unds, and n,„ch o, ,i,e and 
^'t^ttC^"" '-'' '"™ '" *= 5^- darkness of .he n,oo„,ess 

Fr:r::r.he"yn^:7n scZ^rss ^" '"^l^'^ °' '^- "-^ -°- ^^- 

power TT ,t " 

' Upon that Mountam; none beholds them 



Have piled: dome, pyramid, and pinna- 
cle, 

A city of death, distinct with many a 
tower 

And wall impregnable of beaming ice. 

Vet not a city, but a flood of ruin 

Is there, that from the boundaries of the 
sky 



there. 

Nor when the flakes burn in the sinking 
sun, ^ 

Or the star-beams dart thro' them: — 
Winds Qontend 

Silently there, and heap the snow with 
breath 

Rapid and strong, but silently ! Its home 



Rolk its perpetual Stream- vast nine. .r. '7?'^' ^"^ strong, but silently ! Its home 
strewing ' ^ "^' ^'^ V'^ ''''•'^'''' lightning in these solitudes 

«^ I Keeps innocently, and like vapor broods 



NOTE ON POEMS OE 1816. 



495 



Over the snow. The secret strength of 
things 

Which governs thought, and to the in- 
finite dome 

Of heaven is as a law, inhabits thee ! 

And what were thou, and earth, and 
stars, and sea, 

If to the human mind's imaginings 

Silence and solitude were vacancy? 

July 23, 1816. 

CANCELLED PASSAGE OF MONT 
BLANC. 

There is a voice, not understood by all. 
Sent from these desert-caves. It is the 

roar 
Of the rent ice-cliff which the sunbeams 

call. 
Plunging into the vale — it is the blast 
Descending on the pines — the torrents 

pour. . . . 

FRAGMENT: HOME. 

Dear home, thou scene of earliest hopes 

and joys. 
The least of which wronged Memory 

ever makes 
Bitterer than all thine unremembered 

tears. 

FRAGMENT: HELEN AND 
HENRY. 

A SHOVEL of his ashes took 
From, the hearth's obscurest nook. 
Muttering mysteries as she went. 
Helen and Henry knew that Granny 
Was as much afraid of ghosts as any, 

And so they followed hard — 
But Helen clung to her brother's arm. 
And her own spasm made her shake. 

NOTE ON POEMS OF 18 16, BY 
MRS. SHELLEY. 

Shelley wrote little during this year. 
The poem entitled " The Sunset" was 
written in the Spring of the year, while 
still residing at Bishopgate. He spent 
the summer on the shores of the Lake of 



Geneva. "The Hymn to Intellectual 
Beauty " was conceived during his voy- 
age round the lake with Lord Byron. 
He occupied himself during this voyage 
reading the " Nouvelle Heloi'se " for the 
first time. The reading it on the very 
spot where the scenes are laid added to 
the interest; and he was at once surprised 
and charmed by the passionate eloquence 
and earnest enthralling interest that per- 
vade this work. There was something in 
the character of Saint-Preux, in his ab- 
negation of self, and in the worship he 
paid to Love, that coincided with Shel- 
ley's own disposition; and, though dif- 
fering in many of the views and shocked 
by others, yet the effect of the whole 
was fascinating and delightful. 

" Mont Blanc " was inspired by a view 
of that mountain and its surrounding 
peaks and valleys, as he lingered on the 
Bridge of Arve on his way through the 
Valley of Chamouni. Shelley makes the 
following mention of this poem in his 
publication of the "History of Six 
Weeks' Tour, and Letters from Switzer- 
land " : "The poem entitled "Mont 
Blanc" is wrttten by the author of the 
two letters from Chamouni and Vevai. 
It was composed under the immediate 
impression of the deep and powerful 
feelings excited by the objects which it 
attempts to describe; and, as an undis- 
ciplined overflowing of the soul, rests its 
claim to approbation on an attempt to 
imitate the untamable wildness and inac- 
cessible solemnity from which those feel- 
ings sprang." 

This was an eventful year, and less time 
was given to study than usual. In the 
list of his reading I find, in Greek, Theo- 
critus, the " Prometheus " of ^schylus, 
several of Plutarch's Lives' and the 
works of Lucian. In Latin, Lucretius, 
Pliny's Letters, the "Annals" and 
" Germany " of Tacitus. In French, the 
" History of the French Revolution " by 
Lacretelle. He read for the first time, 
this year, Montaigne's Essays, and re- 
garded them ever after as one of the 
most delightful and instructive books in 
the world. The list is scanty in English 
works: Locke's Essay, "Political Jus- 



496 



POEMS W KITTEN IN 1817. 



tice," and Coleridge's " Lay Sermon," 
form nearly the whole. It was his fre- 
quent habit to read aloud to me in the 
evening; in this way we read, this year, 
the New Testament, "Paradise Lost," 
Spenser's "Faery Queen," and "Don 
Quixote." 

POEMS WRITTEN IN 1817. 
MARIANNE'S DREAM. 



A PALE dream came to a Lady fair. 
And said, "A boon, a boon, I pray! 

I know the secrets of the air. 

And things are lost in the glare of day. 

Which I can make the sleeping see, 

If they will put their trust in me. 

II. 

And thou shalt know of things unknown. 
If thou wilt let me rest between 

The veiny lids, whose fringe is thrown 
Over thine eyes so dark and sheen: " 

And half in hope, and half in fright, 

The Lady closed her eyes so bright. 

III. 

At first all deadly shapes were driven 
Tumultuously across her sleep, 

And o'er the vast cope of bending heaven 
All ghastly-visaged clouds did sweep; 

And the Lady ever looked to spy 

If the golden sun shone forth on high. 

IV. 

And as towards the east she turned. 
She saw aloft in the morning air. 

Which now with hues of sunrise burned, 
A great black Anchor rising there; 

And wherever the Lady turned her eyes. 

It hung before her in the skies. 



The sky was blue as the summer sea. 
The depths were cloudless overhead, 

The air was calm as it could be. 

There was no sight or sound of dread, 



But that black Anchor floating stili 
Over the piny eastern hill. 

VI. 

The Lady grew sick with a weight of fear, 

To see that Anchor ever hanging. 
And veiled her eyes; she then did hear 
The sound as of a dim low clanging. 
And looked abroad if she might know 
Was it aught else, or but the llow 
Of the blood in her own veins, to and fro. 

VII. 

There was a mist in the sunless air. 
Which shook as it were with an earth- 
quake's shock. 

But the very weeds that blossomed there 
Were moveless, and each mighty rock 

Stood on its basis steadfastly; 

The Anchor was seen no more on high. 

VIII. 

But piled around, with summits hid 
In lines of cloud at intervals. 

Stood many a mountain pyramid 
Among whose everlasting walls 

Two mighty cities shone, and ever 

Thro' the red mist their domes did 
quiver. 



IX. 



On two dread mountains, from whose 
crest. 

Might seem, the eagle, for her brood, 
Would ne'er have hung her dizzy nest, 

Those tower-encircled cities stood. 
A vision strange such towers to see, 
Sculptured and wrought so gorgeously, 
Where human art could never be. 



And columns framed of marble white. 

And giant fanes, dome over dome 
Piled, and triumphant gates, all bright 

With workmanship, which could not 
come 
From touch of mortal instrument 
Shot o'er the vales, or lustre lent 
From its own shapes magnificent. 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1817. 



497 



XI. 

But still the Lady heard that clang 

Filling the wide air far away; 
And still the mist whose light did hang 

Among the mountains shook alway 
So that the Lady's heart beat fast, 
As half in joy, and half aghast. 
On those high domes her look she cast. 

XII. 

Sudden, from out that city sprung 

A light that made the earth grow red; 

Two flames that each with quivering 
tongue 
Licked its high domes, and overhead 

Among those mighty towers and fanes 

Dropt fire, as a volcano rains 

Its sulphurous ruin on the plains. 

XIII. 

And hark ! a rush as if the deep 

Had burst its bonds; she lookt be- 
hind 
And saw over the western steep 

A raging flood descend, and wind 
Thro' that wild vale; she felt no fear, 
But said within herself, 'T is clear 
These towers are Nature's own, and she 
To save them has sent forth the sea. 

XIV. 

And now those raging billows came 
Where that fair Lady sate, and she 

Was borne towards the showering flame 
By the wild waves heapt tumultu- 
ously 

And on a little plank, the flow 

Of the whirlpool bore her to and fro. 

XV. 

The flames were fiercely vomited 
From every tower and every dome. 

And dreary light did widely shed 

O'er that vast flood's suspended foam, 

Beneath the smoke which hung its night 

On the stained cope of heaven's light. 

XVI. 

The plank whereon the lady sate 

Was driven thro' the chasms, about 
and about. 



Between the peaks so desolate 

Of the drowning mountains, in and 

out, 
As the thistle-beard on a whirlwind 

sails — 
While the flood was filling those hollow 

vales. 

XVII. 

At last her plank an eddy crost. 
And bore her to the city's wall. 

Which now the flood had reacht almost; 
It might the stoutest heart appal 

To hear the fire roar and hiss 

Thro' the domes of those mighty 
palaces. 

XVIII. 

The eddy whirled her round and round 
Before a gorgeous gate, which stood 

Piercing the clouds of smoke which 
bound 
Its aery arch with light like blood; 

She lookt on that gate of marble clear 

With wonder that extinguisht fear. 

XIX. 

For it was filled with sculptures rarest, 
Of forms most beautiful and strange, 

Like nothing human, but the fairest 
Of winged shapes, whose legions range 

Throughout the sleep of those that are, 

Like this same Lady, good and fair. 

XX. 

And as she lookt, still lovelier grew 
Those marble forms; — -the sculptor 
sure 
W^as a strong spirit, and the hue 

Of his own mind did there endure 
After the touch, whose power had braided 
Such grace, was in some sad change 
faded. 

XXI. 

She lookt, the flames were dim, the 
flood 
Grew tranquil as a woodland river 
Winding thro' hills in solitude; 



498 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1817. 



Those marble shapes then seemed to 
quiver 
And their fair limbs to float in motion, 
Like weeds unfolding in the ocean. 

XXII. 

And their lips moved ; one seemed to 
speak, 
When suddenly the mountains crackt, 
And thro' the chasm the flood did 
break 
With an earth-uplifting cataract: 
The statues gave a joyous scream. 
And on its wings the pale thin dream 
Lifted the Lady from the stream. 

XXIII. 

The dizzy flight of that phantom pale 
Waked the fair Lady from her sleep, 

And she arose, while from the veil 
Of her dark eyes the dream did creep, 

And she walkt about as one who knew 

That sleep has sights as clear and true 

As any waking eyes can view. 



TO CONSTANTIA, SINGING. 



Thus to be lost and thus to sink and 
die. 
Perchance were death indeed ! — Con- 
stantia, turn ! 
In thy dark eyes a power like light doth 
lie. 
Even tho' the sounds which were thy 
voice, which burn 
Between thy lips, are laid to sleep; 
Within thy breath, and on thy hair, 
like odor it is yet. 
And from thy touch like fire doth leap. 
Even while I write, my burning cheeks 
are wet, 
Alas, that the torn heart can bleed, but 
not forget ! 

II. 

A breathless awe, like the swift change 
Unseen, but felt in youthful slumbers, 
Wild, sweet, but uncommunicably strange, 



Thou breathest now in fast ascending 
numbers. 
The cope of heaven seems rent and 
cloven 
By the enchantment of thy strain, 
And on my shoulders wings are woven, 

To follow its sublime career, M 

Beyond the mighty moons that wane J 

Upon the verge of nature's utmost 

sphere. 
Till the world's shadowy walls are past 
and disappear. 



III. 

Her voice is hovering o'er my soul — it 
lingers 
O'ershadowing it with soft and lulling 
wings. 
The blood and life within those snowy 
fingers 
Teach witchcraft to the instrumental 
strings. 
My brain is wild, my breath comes 
quick — 
The blood is listening in my frame, 
And thronging shadows, fast and thick, 

Fall on my overflowing eyes; 
My heart is quivering like a flame; 
As morning dew, that in the sunbeam 

dies, 
I am dissolved in these consuming 
ecstasies. 



IV. 

I have no life, Constantia, now, but thee. 
Whilst, like the world-surrounding air, 
thy song 
Flows on, and fills all things with mel- 
ody. — 
Now is thy voice a tempest swift and 
strong. 
On which, like one in trance upborne. 

Secure o'er rocks and waves I sweep, 
Rejoicing like a cloud of morn. 

Now 't is the breath of summer night, 
Which when the starry waters sleep, 
Round western isles, with incense- 
blossoms bright, 
Lingering, suspends my soul in its 
voluptuous flight. 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1817. 



499 



TO CONSTANTIA. 



The rose that drinks the fountain dew 

In the pleasant air of noon, 
Grows pale and bkie with altered hue — 

In the gaze of the nightly moon; 
For the planet of frost, so cold and 

bright, 
Makes it wan with her borrowed light. 

II. 

Such is my heart — roses are fair. 

And that at best a withered blossom; 

But thy false care did idly wear 

Its withered leaves in a faithless bosom; 

And fed with love, like air and dew, 

Its growth 



FRAGMENT : TO ONE SINGING. 

My spirit like a charmed bark doth swim 
Upon the liquid waves of thy sweet 
singing, 
Far away into the regions dim 

Of rapture — as a boat, with swift 
sails winging 
Its way adown some many-winding river. 



A FRAGMENT: TO MUSIC. 

SlLVER^key of the fountain of tears. 
Where the spirit drinks till the brain 
is wild; 
Softest grave of a thousand fears. 

Where their mother. Care, like a 
drowsy child, 
Is laid asleep in flowers. 



ANOTHER FRAGMENT TO 
MUSIC. 

No, Music, thou art not the "food of 

Love," 
Unless Love feeds upon its own sweet 

self. 
Till it becomes all Music murmurs of. 



"MIGHTY EAGLE." 

SUPPOSED TO BE ADDRESSED TO 
WILLIAM GODWIN. 

Mighty eagle ! thou that soarest 
O'er the misty mountain forest 

And amid the light of morning 
Like a cloud of glory hiest, 
And when night descends defiest 

The embattled tempests' warning ! 



TO THE LORD CHANCELLOR. 



Thy country's curse is on thee, darkest 
crest 
Of that foul, knotted, many-headed 
worm 
Which rends our Mother's bosom — 
Priestly Pest ! 
Maskt Resurrection of a buried Form ! 

II. 

Thy country's curse is on thee ! Justice 
sold. 

Truth trampled. Nature's landmarks 
overthrown, 

And heaps of fraud-accumulated gold, 
Plead, loud as thunder, at Destruc- 
tion's throne. 

HI. 

And, whilst that sure slow Angel which 
aye stands 
Watching the beck of Mutability 
Delays to execute her high commands, 
And, tho' a nation weeps, spares 
thine and thee, 

IV. 

O let a father's curse be on thy soul. 
And let a daughter's hope be on thy 
tomb; 
Be both, on thy gray head, a leaden 
cowl 
To weigh thee down to thine approach 
ing doom ! 



500 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1817. 



V. 

I curse thee ! By a parent's outraged love, 
By hopes long cherisht and too lately 
lost, 
By gentle feelings thou couldst never 
prove, 
By griefs which thy stern nature never 
crost; 

VI. 

By those infantine smiles of happy light, 
Which were a fire within a stranger's 
hearth, 
Quencht even when kindled, in un- 
timely night, 
Hiding the promise of a lovely birth; 

VII. 

By those unpractised accents of young 
speech. 
Which he who is a father thought to 
frame 
To gentlest lore, such as the wisest 
teach — 
Thou strike the lyre of mind ! O grief 
and shame ! 

VIII. 

By all the happy see in children's 
growth — 
That undevelopt flower of budding 
years — 
Sweetness and sadness interwoven both. 
Source of the sweetest hopes and sad- 
dest fears — 



IX. 



By all the days under an hireling's care. 
Of dull constraint and bitter heavi- 
ness, — 
O wretched ye if ever any were, — 
Sadder than orphans, yet not father- 
less ! 



By the false cant which on their inno- 
cent lips 
Must hang like poison on an opening 
bloom, 



By the dark creeds which cover with 
eclipse 
Their pathway from the cradle to the 
tomb — 



XI. 



By thy most impious Hell, and all its 
terror; 
By all the grief, the madness, and the 
guilt 
Of thine impostures, which must be 
their error — 
That sand on which thy crumbling 
power is built — 

XII. 

By thy complicity with lust and hate — 
Thy thirst for tears — thy hunger after 
gold — 
The ready frauds which ever on thee 
wait — 
The servile arts in which thou hast 
grown old — 

XIII. 

By thy most killing sneer, and by thy 
smile — 
By all the arts and snares of thy black 
den. 
And — for thou canst outweep the croco- 
dile — 
By thy false tears — those millstones 
braining men — 

XIV. 

By all the hate which checks a father's 
love — 
By all the scorn which kills a father's 
care — 
By those most impious hands which dared 
remove 
Nature's high bounds — by thee — and 
by despair — 

XV. 

Yes, the despair which bids a father 
groan, 
And cry, " My children are no longer 
mine — 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1817. 



501 



The blood within those veins may be 
mine own, 
But — Tyrant — their polluted souls 
are thine; — " 



xvr. 

I curse thee — though I hate thee not — 
O slave ! 
If thou couldst quench the earth-con- 
suming Hell 
Of which thou art a daemon, on thy grave 
This curse should be a blessing. Fare 
thee well ! 



TO WILLIAM SHELLEY. 



The billows on the beach are leaping 

around it, 
The bark is weak and frail, 
The sea looks black, and the clouds that 

bound it 
Darkly strew the gale. 
Come with me, thou delightful child. 
Come with me, tho' the wave is wild. 
And the winds are loose, we must not 

stay. 
Or the slaves of the law may rend thee 

away. 

II. 

They have taken thy brother and sister 
dear, 
They have made them unfit for thee; 
They have withered the smile and dried 
the tear 
Which should have been sacred to me. 
To a blighting faith and a cause of crime 
They have bound them slaves in youthly 

prime, 
And they will curse my name and thee 
Because we are fearless and free. 



III. 

Come thou, beloved as thou art; 
Another sleepeth still 



Near thy sweet mother's anxious heart, 

Which thou with joy shalt fill. 
With fairest smiles of wonder thrown 
On that which is indeed our own. 
And which in distant lands will be 
The dearest playmate unto thee. 



IV. 

Fear not the tyrants will rule for ever, 

Or the priests of the evil faith: 
They stand on the brink of that raging 

river, 
Whose waves they have tainted with 

death. 
It is fed from the depth of a thousand 

dells, 
Around them it foams and rages and 

swells; 
And their swords and their sceptres I 

floating see. 
Like wrecks on the surge of eternity. 



V. 

Rest, rest, and shriek not, thou gentle 
child ! 
The rocking of the boat thou fearest. 
And the cold spray and the clamor 
wild? — 
There sit between us two, thou dear- 
est — 
Me and thy mother — well we know 
The storm at which thou tremblest so, 
With all its dark and hungry graves, 
Less cruel than the savage slaves 
Who hunt us o'er these sheltering waves. 



VI. 

This hour will in thy memory 

Be a dream of days forgotten long, 
We soon shall dwell by the azure sea 
Of serene and golden Italy, 
Or Greece, the Mother of the free; 

And I will teach thine infant tongue 
To call upon those heroes old 
In their own language, and will mould 
Thy growing spirit in the flame 
Of Grecian lore, that by such name 
A patriot's birthright thou mayst claim ! 



502 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1817. 



FROM THE ORIGINAL DRAFT 

OF THE POEM TO WILLIAM 

SHELLEY. 



The world is now our dwelling-place; 
Where'er the earth one fading trace 

Of what was great and free does keep, 
That is our home ! . . . 
Mild thoughts of man's ungentle race 

Shall our contented exile reap; 
For who that in some happy place 
His own free thoughts can freely chase 
By woods and waves can clothe his face 

In cynic smiles? Child! we shall 
weep. 

II. 

This lament, 
The memory of thy grievous wrong 
Will fade . . . 
But genius is omnipotent 
To hallow . . . 



ON FANNY GODWIN. 

Her voice did quiver as we parted, 

Yet knew I not that heart was broken 
From which it came, and I departed 
Heeding not the words then spoken. 
Misery — O Misery, 
This world is all too wide for thee. 



LINES. 



That time is dead for ever, child. 
Drowned, frozen, dead for ever ! 

We look on the past 

And stare aghast 
At the spectres wailing, pale and ghast, 
Of hopes which thou and I beguiled 

To death on life's dark river. 



The stream we gazed on then, rolled by; 
Its waves are unreturning; 

But we yet stand 

In a lone land, 



Like tombs to mark the memory 

Of hopes and fears, which fade and flee 

In the light of life's dim morning. 



DEATH. 



They die — the dead return not — = 
Misery 
Sits near an open grave and calls them 
over, 
A Youth with hoary hair and haggard 
eye — 
They are the names of kindred, friend 
and lover. 
Which he so feebly calls — they all are 

gone ! 
Fond wretch, all dead, those vacant 
names alone. 
This most familiar scene, my pain — 
These tombs alone remain. 



II. 

Misery, my sweetest friend — oh ! weep 
no more ! 
Thou wilt not be consoled — I wonder 
not! 
For I have seen thee from thy dwelling's 
door 
Watch the calm sunset with them, and 
this spot 
Was even as bright and calm, but tran- 
sitory. 
And now thy hopes are gone, thy hair is 
hoary; 
This most familiar scene, my pain — 
These tombs alone remain. 



OTHO. 



Thou wert not, Cassius, and thou couldst 
not be, 
Last of the Romans, tho' thy memory 
claim 
From Brutus his own glory — and on 
thee 
Rests the full splendor of his sacred 
fame; 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1817. 



503 



Nor he who dared make the foul tyrant 
quail 
Amid his cowering senate with thy 
name, 
Tho' thou and he were great — it will 

avail 
To thine own fame that Otho's should 
not fail. 

II. 

'T will wrong thee not — thou wouldst, 
if thou couldst feel, 
Abjure such envious fame — great 
Otho died 
Like thee — he sanctified his country's 
steel, 
At once the tyrant and tyrannicide, 
In his own blood — a deed it was to 
bring 
Tears from all men — tho' full of 
gentle pride. 
Such pride as from impetuous love may 

spring. 
That will not be refused its offering. 



FRAGMENTS SUPPOSED TO 
BE PARTS OF OTHO. 

I. 

Those whom nor power, nor lying faith, 
nor toil, 
Nor custom, queen of many slaves, 
makes blind. 
Have ever grieved that man should be 
the spoil 
Of his own weakness, and with earnest 
mind 
Fed hopes of its redemption, these recur 
Chastened by deathful victory now, 
and find 
Foundations in this foulest age, and stir 
Me whom they cheer to be their minister. 



II. 



Dark is the realm of grief : but human 
things 
Those may not know who cannot weep 
for them. 



III. 

Once more descend 
The shadows of my soul upon man- 
kind, 
For to those hearts with which they 
never blend, 
Thoughts are but shadows which the 
flashing mind 
From the swift clouds which track its 
flight of fire. 
Casts on the gloomy world it leaves 
behind. 



FRAGMENT: A CLOUD- 
CHARIOT. 

O THAT a chariot of cloud were mine ! 
Of cloud which the wild tempest 
weaves in air. 
When the moon over the ocean's line 
Is spreading the locks of her bright 
gray hair. 
O that a chariot of cloud were mine ! 
I would sail on the waves of the bil- 
lowy wind 
To the mountain peak and the rocky 

lake, 
And the . . . 



FRAGMENT: TO ONE FREED 
FROM PRISON. 

For me, my friend, if not that tears did 
tremble 
In my faint eyes, and that my heart 
beat fast 
With feelings which make rapture pain 
resemble. 
Yet, from thy voice that falsehood 
starts aghast, 
I thank thee — let the tyrant keep 
His chains and tears, yea let him weep 
With rage to see thee freshly risen, 
Like strength from slumber, from the 

prison, 
In which he vainly hoped the soul to 
bind 
Which on the chains must prey that fet- 
ter humankind. 



S04 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1817. 



FRAGMENT: SATAN AT LARGE. 

A GOLDEN-WINGED Angel stood 

Before the Eternal Judgment-seat : 
His looks were wild, and Devils' blood 

Stained his dainty hands and feet. 
The Father and the Son 
Knew that strife was now begun. 
They knew that Satan had broken his 

chain, 
And with millions of demons in his train, 
Was ranging over the world again. 
Before the Angel had told his tale, 
A sweet and a creeping sound 
Like the rushing of wings was heard 
around; 
And suddenly the lamps grew pale — 
The lamps, before the Archangels seven, 
That burn continually in heaven. 



FRAGMENT: UNSATISFIED 
DESIRE. 

To thirst and find no fill — to wail and 

wander 
With short uneasy steps — to pause and 

ponder- — 
To feel the blood run thro' the veins and 

tingle 
Where busy thought and blind sensation 

mingle; 
To nurse the image of unfelt caresses 
Till dim imagination just possesses 
The half created shadow. 



FRAGMENT: LOVE IMMORTAL. 

Wealth and dominion fade into the 
mass 
Of the great sea of human right and 
wrong. 

When once from our possession they 
must pass; 
But love, though misdirected, is among 

The things which are immortal, and sur- 
pass 

All that frail stuff which will be — or 
which was. 



FRAGMENT: THOUGHTS IN 
SOLITUDE. 

My thoughts arise and fade in solitude. 
The verse that would invest them 

melts away 
Like moonlight in the heaven of 
spreading day: 
How beautiful they were, how firm they 

stood. 
Flecking the starry sky like woven pearl ! 



FRAGMENT: THE FIGHT 
WAS O'ER. 

The fight was o'er: the flashing thro' 

the gloom 
Which robes the cannon as he wings a 

tomb 
Had ceast. 

A HATE-SONG. 

A Hater he came and sat by a ditch, 
And he took an old crackt lute; 

And he sang a song which was more of 
a screech 
'Gainst a woman that was a brute. 



LINES TO A CRITIC. 



Honey from silkworms who can gather, 
Or silk from the yellow bee? 

The grass may grow in winter weather 
As soon as hate in me. 



II. 



Hate men who cant, and men who pray, 
And men who rail like thee; 

An equal passion to repay 
They are not coy like me. 

III. 

Or seek some slave of power and gold, 
To be thy dear heart's mate, 



NOTE ON POEMS OF 1817. 



505 



Thy love will move that bigot cold 
Sooner than me thy hate. 



IV. 



A passion like the one I prove 

Cannot divided be; 
I hate thy want of truth and love 

How should I then hate thee? 



OZYMANDIAS. 

I MET a traveller from an antique land 
Who said : *' Two vast and trunkless legs 

of stone 
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the 

sand, 
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose 

frown, 
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold com- 
mand. 
Tell that its sculptor well those passions 

read 
Which yet survive, stampt on these 

lifeless things. 
The hand that mockt them and the 

heart that fed : 
And on the pedestal these words appear : 
' My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: 
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and de- 



spair 



I ' 



Nothing beside remains. Round the de- 
cay 

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and 
bare 

The lone and level sands stretch far 
away. " 



NOTE ON POEMS OF 181 7, BY 
MRS. SHELLEY. 

The very illness that oppressed, and 
the aspect of death which had approached 
so near Shelley, appear to have kindled 
to yet keener life the Spirit of Poetry in 
his heart. The restless thoughts kept 
awake by pain clothed themselves in 
verse. Much was composed during this 
year. The "Revolt of Islam," written 
and printed, was a great effort — '• Ros- 
alind and Helen" was begun — and the 



fragments and poems I can trace to the 
same period show how full of passion 
and reflection were his solitary hours. 

In addition to such poems as have an 
intelligible aim and shape, many a stray 
idea and transitory emotion found imper- 
fect and abrupt expression, and then 
again lost themselves in silence. As he 
never wandered without a book and with- 
out implements of writing, I find many 
such, in his manuscript books, that 
scarcely bear record ; while some of them, 
broken and vague as they are, will ap- 
pear valuable to those who love Shelley's 
mind, and desire to trace its workings. 

He projected also translating the 
Hymns of Homer; his version of several 
of the shorter ones remains, as well as 
that to Mercury already published in the 
"Posthumous Poems." His readings 
this year were chiefly Greek. Besides 
the Hymns of Homer and the " Iliad," 
he read the Dramas of ^schylus and 
Sophocles, the " Symposium " of Plato, 
and Arrian's "Historia Indica." In 
Latin, Apuleius alone is named. In Eng- 
lish, the Bible was his constant study; 
he read a great portion of it aloud in the 
evening. Among these evening readings 
I find also mentioned the " Faery 
Queen ;" and other modern works, the 
production of his contemporaries, Cole- 
ridge, Wordsworth, Moore, and Byron. 

His life was now spent more in thought 
than action — he had lost the eager spirit 
which believed it could achieve what it 
projected for the benefit of mankind. 
And yet in the converse of daily life 
Shelley was far from being a melancholy 
man. He was eloquent when philoso- 
phy or politics or taste were the subjects 
of conversation. He was playful; and 
indulged in the wild spirit that mocked 
itself and others — not in bitterness, but 
in sport. The author of "Nightmare 
Abbey " seized on some points of his 
character and some habits of his life 
when he painted Scythrop. He was not 
addicted to "port or madeira," but in 
youth he had read of " Illuminati and 
Eleutherarchs," and believed that he 
possessed the power of operating an im- 
i mediate change in the minds of men and 



5o6 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1818. 



the state of society. These wild dreams 
had faded ; sorrow and adversity had 
struck home ; but he struggled with de- 
spondency as he did with physical pain. 
There are few who remember him sailing 
paper boats, and watching the navigation 
of his tiny craft with eagerness — or re- 
peating with wild energy "The Ancient 
Mariner," and Southey's "Old Woman 
of Berkeley;" but those who do will re- 
collect that it was in such, and in the 
creations of his own fancy when that was 
most daring and ideal, that he sheltered 
himself from the storms and disappoint- 
ments, the pain and sorrow, that beset 
his life. 

No words can express the anguish he 
felt when his elder children were torn 
from him. In his first resentment against 
the Chancellor, on the passing of the de- 
cree, he had written a curse, in which 
there breathes, besides haughty indigna- 
tion, all the tenderness of a father's love, 
which could imagine and fondly dwell 
upon its loss and the consequences. 

At one time, while the question was 
still pending, the Chancellor had* said 
some words that seemed to intimate that 
Shelley should not be permitted the care 
of any of his children, and for a moment 
he feared that our infant son would be 
torn from us. He did not hesitate to re- 
solve, if such were menaced, to abandon 
country, fortune, everything, and to es- 
cape with his child; and I find some 
unfinished stanzas addressed to this son, 
whom afterwards we lost at Rome, writ- 
ten under the idea that we might suddenly 
be forced to cross the sea, so to preserve 
him. This poem, as well as the one pre- 
viously quoted, were not written to ex- 
hibit the pangs of distress to the public; 
they were the spontaneous outbursts of a 
man who brooded over his wrongs and 
woes, and was impelled to shed the grace 
of his genius over the uncontrollable 
emotions of his heart. I ought to observe 
that the fourth verse of this effusion is 
introduced in "Rosalind and Helen." 
When afterwards this child died at Rome, 
he wrote, hproposoi the English burying- 
ground in that city: "This spot is the 
repository of a sacred loss, of which the 



yearnings of a parent's heart are now 
prophetic ; he is rendered immortal by 
love, as his memory is by death. My 
beloved child lies buried here. I envy 
death the body far less than the oppres- 
sors the minds of those whom they have 
torn from me. The one can o,nly kill the 
body, the other crushes the affections. 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1818. 
TO THE NILE. 

Month after month the gathered rains 
descend 

Drenching yon secret Ethiopian dells. 

And from the desert's ice-girt pinnacles 

Where Frost and Heat in strange em- 
braces blend 

On Atlas, fields of moist snow half de- 
pend. 

Girt there with blasts and meteors. Tem- 
pest dwells 

By Nile's aerial urn, with rapid spells 

Urging those waters to their mighty end. 

O'er Egypt's land of Memory floods are 
level 

And they are thine, O Nile ! — and well 
thou knowest 

That soul-sustaining airs and blasts of 
evil 

And fruits and poisons spring where'er 
thou flowest. 

Beware O Man — for knowledge must to 
thee 

Like the great flood to Egypt, ever be. 



PASSAGE OF THE APENNINES. 

Listen, listen, Mary mine. 

To the whisper of the Apennine, 

It bursts on the roof like the thunder's 

roar. 
Or like the sea on a northern shore, 
Heard in its raging ebb and flow 
By the captives pent in the cave below. 
The Apennine in the light of day 
Is a mighty mountain dim and gray, 
Which between the earth and sky doth 

lay; 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1818. 



507 



But when night comes, a chaos dread 
On the dim starlight then is spread, 
And the Apennine walks abroad with the 
storm. 

THE PAST. 



Wilt thou forget the happy hours 
Which we buried in Love's sweet bowers. 
Heaping o'er their corpses cold 
Blossoms and leaves, instead of mould? 
Blossoms which were the joys that fell. 
And leaves, the hopes that yet re- 
main. 

II. 

Forget the dead, the past? O yet 
There are ghosts that may take revenge 

for it, 
Memories that make the heart a tomb, 
Regrets which glide thro' the spirit's 
gloom, 
And with ghastly whispers tell 
That joy, once lost, is pain. 

TO MARY . 



Mary dear, that you were here. 
With yoir brown eyes bright and clear 
And your sweet voice, like a bird 
Singing love to its lone mate 

In the ivy bower disconsolate; 

Voice the sweetest ever heard ! 

And your brow more . . . 

Than the sky 

Of this azure Italy. 

Mary dear, come to me soon, 

1 am not well whilst thou art far; 
As sunset to the sphered moon. 
As twilight to the western star, 
Thou, beloved, art to me. 

O Mary dear, that you were here; 
The Castle echo whispers " Here ! " 

ON A FADED VIOLET. 

I. 

The odor from the flower is gone 

Which like thy kisses breathed on me; 



The color from the flower is flown 

Which glowed of thee and only thee ! 



II. 



A shrivelled, lifeless, vacant form, 
It lies on my abandoned breast. 

And mocks the heart which yet is warm, 
With cold and silent rest. 



III. 



I weep, — my tears revive it not ! 

I sigh, — it breathes no more on me; 
Its mute and uncomplaining lot 

Is such as mine should be. 



LINES 

WRITTEN AMONG THE EUGANEAN 
HILLS. 

October, 1818. 

Many a green isle needs must be 

In the deep wide sea of misery. 

Or the mariner, worn and wan. 

Never thus could voyage on 

Day and night, and night and day, 

Drifting on his dreary way. 

With the solid darkness black 

Closing round his vessel's track; 

Whilst above, the sunless sky, 

Big with clouds, hangs heavily, 

And behind the tempest fleet 

Hurries on with lightning feet. 

Riving sail, and cord, and plank. 

Till the ship has almost drank 

Death from the o'er-brimming deep; 

And sinks down, down, like that sleep 

When the dreamer seems to be 

Weltering through eternity; 

And the dim low line before 

Of a dark and distant shore 

Still recedes, as ever still 

Longing with divided will. 

But no power to seek or shun, 

He is ever drifted on 

O'er the unreposing wave 

To the haven of the grave. 

What, if there no friends will greet; 

What, if there no heart will meet 

His with love's impatient beat; 



5o8 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1818. 



Wander wheresoe'er he may, 

Can he dream before that day 

To find refuge from distress 

In friendship's smile, in love's caress? 

Then 't will wreak him little woe 

Whether such there be or no: 

Senseless is the breast, and cold, 

Which relenting love would fold; 

Bloodless are the veins and chill 

Which the pulse of pain did fill; 

Every little living nerve 

That from bitter words did swerve 

Round the tortured lips and brow, 

Are like sapless leaflets now 

Frozen upon December's bough. 

On the beach of a northern sea 

Which tempests shake eternally. 

As once the wretch there lay to sleep, 

Lies a solitary heap, 

One white skull and seven dry bones, 

On the margin of the stones. 

Where a few gray rushes stand, 

Boundaries of the sea and land: 

Nor is heard one voice of wail 

But the sea-mews, as they sail 

O'er the billows of the gale; 

Or the whirlwind up and down 

Howling, like a slaughtered town. 

When a king in glory rides 

Through the pomp of fratricides: 

Those unburied bones around 

There is many a mournful sound; 

There is no lament for him, 

Like a sunless vapor, dim. 

Who once clothed with life and thought 

What now moves nor murmurs not. 

Ay, many flowering islands lie 

In the waters of wide Agony : 

To such a one this morn was led, 

My bark by soft winds piloted : 

Mid the mountains Euganean 

I stood listening to the paean, 

With which the legioned rooks did hail 

The sun's uprise majestical; 

Gathering round with wings all hoar. 

Thro' the dewy mist they soar 

Like gray shades, till the eastern heaven 

Bursts, and then, as clouds of even, 

Fleckt with fire and azure, lie 

In the unfathomable sky, 

So their plumes of purple grain. 

Starred with drops of golden rain, 



Gleam above the sunlight woods. 
As in silent multitudes 
On the morning's fitful gale 
Thro' the broken mist they sail. 
And the vapors cloven and gleaming 
Follow down the dark steep streaming, 
Till all is bright, and clear, and still, 
Round the solitary hill. 

Beneath is spread like a green sea 
The waveless plain of Lombardy, 
Bounded by the vaporous air, 
Islanded by cities fair; 
Underneath day's azure eyes 
Ocean's nursling, Venice lies, 
A peopled labyrinth of walls, 
Amphitrite's destined halls. 
Which her hoary sire now paves 
With his blue and beaming waves. 
Lo ! the sun upsprings behind. 
Broad, red, radiant, half reclined 
On the level quivering line 
Of the waters crystalline; 
And before that chasm of light. 
As within a furnace bright, 
Column, tower, and dome, and spire. 
Shine like obelisks of fire. 
Pointing with inconstant motion 
From the altar of dark ocean 
To the sapphire-tinted skies; 
As the flames of sacrifice 
From the marble shrines did rise, 
As to pierce the dome of gold 
Where Apollo spoke of old. 

Sun-girt City, thou hast been 
Ocean's child, and then his queen; 
Now is come a darker day. 
And thou soon must be his prey. 
If the power that raised thee here 
Hallow so thy watery bier. 
A less drear ruin then than now. 
With thy conquest-branded brow 
Stooping to the slave of slaves 
From thy throne, among the waves 
Wilt thou be, when the sea-mew 
Flies, as once before it flew, 
O'er thine isles depopulate. 
And all is in its ancient state. 
Save where many a palace gate 
With green sea-flowers overgrown 
Like a rock of ocean's own. 
Topples o'er the abandoned sea 
As the tides change sullenly. 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1818. 



509 



The fisher on his watery way, 
Wandering at the close of day, 
Will spread his sail and seize his oar 
Till he pass the gloomy shore, 
Lest thy dead should, from their sleep 
Bursting o'er the starlight deep. 
Lead a rapid masque of death 
O'er the waters of his path. 

Those who alone thy towers behold 
Quivering thro' aerial gold. 
As I now behold them here. 
Would imagine not they were 
Sepulchres, where human forms. 
Like pollution-nourisht worms 
To the corpse of greatness cling, 
Murdered, and now mouldering: 
But if Freedom should awake 
In her omnipotence, and shake 
From the Celtic Anarch's hold 
All the keys of dungeons cold. 
Where a hundred cities lie 
Chained like thee, ingloriously, 
Thou and all thy sister band 
Might adorn this sunny land. 
Twining memories of old time 
With new virtues more sublime; 
If not, perish thou and they, 
Clouds which slain truth's rising day 
By her sun consumed away, 
Earth can spare ye : while like flowers. 
In the waste of years and hours, 
From your dust new nations spring 
With more kindly blossoming. 
Perish — let there only be 
Floating o'er thy heartless sea 
As the garment of thy sky 
Clothes the world immortally. 
One remembrance, more sublime 
Than the tattered pall of time. 
Which scarce hides thy visage wan; — 
That a tempest-cleaving Swan 
Of the songs of Albion, 
Driven from his ancestral streams 
By the might of evil dreams, 
Found a nest in thee; and Ocean 
Welcomed him with such emotion 
That its joy grew his, and sprung 
From his lips like music flung 
O'er a mighty thunder-fit 
Chastening terror: — what tho' yet 
Poesy's unfailing River, 
Which thro' Albion winds forever 



Lashing with melodious wave 
Many a sacred Poet's grave, 
Mourn its latest nursling fled? 
What tho' thou with all thy dead 
Scarce can for this fame repay 
Aught thine own? oh, rather say 
Tho' thy sins and slaveries foul 
Overcloud a sunlike soul? 
As the ghost of Homer clings 
Round Scamander's wasting springs; 
As divinest Shakespere's might 
Fills Avon and the world with light 
Like omniscient power which he 
Imaged mid mortality; 
As the love from Petrarch's urn, 
Yet amid yon hills doth burn, 
A quenchless lamp by which the heart 
Sees things unearthly; — so thou art 
Mighty spirit — so shall be 
The City that did refuge thee. 

Lo, the sun floats up the sky 
Like thought-wingesl Liberty, 
Till the universal light 
Seems to level plain and height; 
From the sea a mist has spread. 
And the beams of morn lie dead 
On the towers of Venice now, 
Like its glory long ago. 
By the skirts of that gray cloud 
Many-domed Padua proud 
Stands, a peopled solitude, 
Mid the harvest-shining plain, 
Where the peasant heaps his grain 
In the garner of his foe. 
And the milk-white oxen slow 
With the purple vintage strain, 
Heapt upon the creaking wain, 
That the brutal Celt may swill 
Drunken sleep with savage will; 
And the sickle to the sword 
Lies unchanged, tho' many a lord, 
Like a weed whose shade is poison, 
Overgrows this region's foison. 
Sheaves of whom are ripe to come 
To destruction's harvest-home : 
Men must reap the things they sow, 
Force from force must ever flow. 
Or worse; but 't is a bitter woe 
That love or reason cannot change 
The despot's rage, the slave's revenge. 

Padua, thou within whose walls 
Those mute guests at festivals, 



510 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1818. 



Son and Mother, Death and Sin, 
Played at dice for Ezzelin, 
Till Death cried, " I win, I win ! " 
And Sin curst to lose the wager, 
But Death promist, to assuage her, 
That he would petition for 
Her to be made Vice-Emperor, 
When the destined years were o'er. 
Over all between the Po 
And the eastern Alpine snow, 
Under the mighty Austrian. 
Sin smiled so as Sin only can, 
And since that time, ay, long before. 
Both have ruled from shore to shore, 
That incestuous pair, who follow 
Tyrants as the sun the swallow, 
As repentance follows Crime, 
And as changes follow Time. 

In thine halls the lamp of learning, 

Padua, now no more is burning; 

Like a meteor, whose wild way 

Is lost over the grave of day. 

It gleams betrayed and to betray : 

Once remotest nations came 

To adore that sacred flame. 

When it lit not many a hearth 

On this cold and gloomy earth : 

Now new fires from antique light 

Spring beneath the wide world's might; 

But their spark lies dead in thee, 

Trampled out by tyranny. 

As the Norway woodman quells, 

In the depth of piny dells. 

One light flame among the brakes 

While the boundless forest shakes, 

And its mighty trunks are torn 

By the fire thus lowly born: 

The spark beneath his feet is dead. 

He starts to see the flames it fed 

Howling thro' the darkened sky 

With a myriad tongues victoriously. 

And sinks down in fear: so thou 

O Tyranny ! beholdest now 

Light around thee, and thou hearest 

The loud flames ascend, and feairest: 

Grovel on the earth ! ay, hide 

In the dust thy purple pride ! 

Noon descends around me now: 
'T is the noon of autumn's glow, 
When a soft and purple mist 
Like a vaporous amethyst, 



Or an air-dissolved star 

Mingling light and fragrance, far 

From the curved horizon's bound 

To the point of heaven's profound, 

Fills the overflowing sky; 

And the plains that silent lie 

Underneath, the leaves unsodden 

Where the infant frost has trodden 

With his morning-winged feet, 

Whose bright print is gleaming yet; 

And the red and golden vines. 

Piercing with their trellist lines 

The rough, dark-skirted wilderness; 

The dun and bladed grass no less, 

Pointing from this hoary tower 

In the windless air; the flower 

Glimmering at my feet; the line 

Of the olive-sandalled Apennine 

In the south dimly islanded: 

And the Alps, whose snows are spread 

High between the clouds and sun; 

And of living things each one; 

And my spirit which so long 

Darkened this swift stream of song. 

Interpenetrated lie 

By the glory of the sky: 

Be it love, light, harmony. 

Odor, or the soul of all 

Which from heaven like dew doth fall. 

Or the mind which feeds this verse 

Peopling the lone universe. 

Noon descends, and after noon 

Autumn's evening meets me soon, 

Leading the infantine moon. 

And that one star, which to her 

Almost seems to minister 

Half the crimson light she brings 

From the sunset's radiant springs: 

And the soft dreams of the morn 

(Which like winged winds had borne 

To that silent isle, which lies 

Mid remembered agonies, 

The frail bark of this lone being) 

Pass, to other sufferers fleeing, 

And its ancient pilot, Pain, 

Sits beside the helm again. 

Other flowering isles must be 

In the sea of life and agony: 

Other spirits float and flee 

O'er that gulf: even now, perhaps, 

On some rock the wild wave wraps. 

With folded wings they waiting sit 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1818. 



511 



For my bark, to pilot it 

To some calm and blooming cove, 

Where for me, and those I love, 

May a windless bower be built. 

Far from passion, pain, and guilt, 

In a dell mid lawny hills. 

Which the wild sea-murmur fills, 

And soft sunshine, and the sound 

Of old forests echoing round, 

And the light and smell divine 

Of all flowers that breathe and shine : 

We may live so happy there, 

That the spirits of the air. 

Envying us, may even entice 

To our healing paradise 

The polluting multitude; 

But their rage would be subdued 

By that clime divine and calm, 

And the wind whose wings rain balm 

On the uplifted soul, and leaves 

Under which the bright sea heaves; 

While each breathless interval 

In their whisperings musical 

The inspired soul supplies 

With its own deep melodies, 

And the love which heals all strife 

Circling, like the breath of life, 

All things in that sweet abode 

With its own mild brotherhood: 

They, not it, would change; and soon 

Every sprite beneath the moon 

Would repent its envy vain. 

And the earth grow young again. 



SCENE FROM "TASSO." 



Maddalo, a Courtier. 
Malpiglio, a Poet. 



PiGNA, a Minister. 
Albano, an Usher. 



jMaddalo. No access to the Duke ! 
You have not said 
That the Count Maddalo would speak 
with him? 
Pigna. Did you inform his Grace that 
Signor Pigna 
Waits with state papers for his signature ? 
Malpiglio. The Lady Leonora cannot 
know 
That I have written a sonnet to her fame. 
In which I Venus and Adonis. 

You should not take my gold and serve 
me not. 



Albano. In truth I told her, und she 

smiled and said, 
" If I am Venus, thou, coy Poesy, 
Art the Adonis whom I love, and he 
The Erymanthian boar that wounded 

him." 
O trust to me, Signor Malpiglio, 
Those nods and smiles were favors worth 

the zechin. 
Malpiglio. The words are twisted in 

some double sense 
That I reach not: the smiles fell not 

on me. 
Pigna. How are the Duke and 

Duchess occupied? 
Albano. Buried in some strange talk. 

The Duke was leaning. 
His finger on his brow, his lips unclosed. 
The Princess sate within the window-seat, 
And so her face was hid; but on her knee 
Her hands were claspt, veined, and 

pale as snow. 
And quivering — young Tasso, too, was 

there. 
Maddalo. Thou seest on whom from 

thine own worshipped heaven 
Thou drawest down smiles — they did 

not rain on thee. 
Malpiglio. Would they were parch- 
ing lightnings for his sake 
On whom they fell ! 



SONG FOR "TASSO.'» 



I LOVED — alas ! our life is love; 

But when we cease to breathe and move 

I do suppose love ceases too. 

I thought, but not as now I do. 

Keen thoughts and bright of linked lore, 

Of all that men had thought before, 

And all that nature shows, and more. 



And still I love and still I think. 
But strangely, for my heart can drink 
The dregs of such despair, and live, 
And love; . . . 

And if I think, my thoughts come fast, 
I mix the present with the past. 
And each seems uglier than the last. 



JI2 



POEMS WRITTEN IN i8i8. 



III. 

Sometimes I see before me flee 

A silver spirit's form, like thee, 

O Leonora, and I sit 

. . . still watching it, 

Till by the grated casement's ledge 

It fades, with such a sigh, as sedge 

Breathes o'er the breezy streamlet's edge. 



TO MISERY. 



Come, be happy ! — sit near me, 
Shadow-vested Misery: 
Coy, unwilling, silent bride. 
Mourning in thy robe of pride, 
Desolation — deified ! 



II. 

Come, be happy; — sit near me: 
Sad as I may seem to thee, 
I am happier far than thou, 
Lady, whose imperial brow 
Is endiademed with woe. 

III. 

Misery ! we have known each other, 
Like a sister and a brother 
Living in the same lone home. 
Many years — we must live some 
Hours or ages yet to come. 

IV. 

'T is an evil lot, and yet 

Let us make the best of it; 

If love can live when pleasure dies. 

We two will love, till in our eyes 

This heart's Hell seem Paradise. 



V. 

Come, be happy ! — lie thee down 
On the fresh grass newly mown, 
Where the Grasshopper doth sing 
Merrily — one joyous thing 
In a world of sorrowing ! 



VI. 

There our tent shall be the willow 
And thine arm shall be my pillow; 
Sounds and odors sorrowful 
Because they once were sweet, shall lull 
Us to slumber, deep and dull. 

VII. 

Ha ! thy frozen pulses flutter 
With a love thou darest not utter. 
Thou art murmuring — thou art weep- 
ing- 
Is thine icy bosom leaping 
While my burning heart lies sleeping? 

VIII. 

Kiss me; — oh ! thy lips are cold; 
Round my neck thine arms enfold — 
They are soft, but chill and dead; 
And thy tears upon my head 
Burn like points of frozen lead. 

IX. 

Hasten to the bridal bed — 
Underneath the grave 't is spread: 
In darkness may our love be hid. 
Oblivion be our coverlid — 
We may rest, and none forbid. 



Clasp me till our hearts be grown 
Like two shadows into one; 
Till this dreadful transport may 
Like a vapor fade away 
In the sleep that lasts alway. 

XI. 

We may dream, in that long sleep. 
That we are not those who weep; 
E'en as Pleasure dreams of thee. 
Life-deserting Misery, 
Thou mayst dream of her with me. 

XII. 

Let us laugh, and make our mirth, 
At the shadows of the earth, 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1818. 



513 



As dogs bay the moonlight clouds, 
Which, like spectres wrapt in shrouds. 
Pass o'er night in multitudes. 

XIII. 

All the wide world, beside us 
Show like multitudinous 
Puppets passing from a scene; 
What but mockery can they mean, 
Where I am — where thou hast been ? 



STANZAS. 



WRITTEN IN DEJECTION, NEAR NAPLES. 



The sun is warm, the sky is clear. 
The waves are dancing fast and 
bright. 
Blue isles and snowy mountains wear 
The purple noon's transparent might. 
The breath of the moist earth is 
light. 
Around its unexpanded buds; 

Like many a voice of one delight. 
The winds, the birds, the ocean floods. 
The City's voice itself is soft like Soli- 
tude's. 

II. 

I see the Deep's untrampled floor 

With green and purple seaweeds 

strown; 
I see the waves upon the shore. 

Like light dissolved in star-showers, 

thrown : 
I sit upon the sands alone. 
The lightning of the noontide ocean 
Is flashing round me, and a tone 
Arises from its measured motion. 
How sweet ! did any heart now share 
in my emotion. 

III. 

Alas ! I have nor hope nor health. 
Nor peace within nor calm around. 

Nor that content surpassing wealth 
The sage in meditation found, 
And walkt with inward glory 
crowned — 



Nor fame, nor power, nor love, nor 
leisure. 
Others I see whom these surround — 
Smiling they live, and call life pleas- 
ure ; — 
To me that cup has been dealt in another 
measure. 

IV. 

Yet now despair itself is mild. 

Even as the winds and waters are; 
I could lie down like a tired child, 
And weep away the life of care 
Which I have borne and yet must 
bear, 
Till death like sleep might steal on me. 

And I might feel in the warm air 
My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea 
Breathe o'er my dying brain its last 
monotony. 

V. 

Some might lament that I were cold, 
As I, when this sweet day is gone, 
Which my lost heart, too soon grown 
old. 
Insults with this untimely moan; 
They might lament — for I am one 
Whom men love not, — and yet regret, 
Unlike this day, which, when the 
sun 
Shall on its stainless glory set, 
Will linger, though enjoyed, like joy in 
memory yet. 



THE WOODMAN AND THE 
NIGHTINGALE. 

A WOODMAN whose rough heart was out 

of tune 
(I think such hearts yet never came to 

good) 
Hated to hear, under the stars or moon, 

One nightingale in an interfluous wood 
Satiate the hungry dark with melody; — 
And as a vale is watered by a flood. 

Or as the moonlight fills the open sky 
Struggling with darkness - — as a tuberose 



SH 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1818. 



Peoples some Indian dell with scents 
which lie 

Like clouds above the flower from which 

they rose, 
The singing of that happy nightingale 
In this sweet forest, from the golden 

close 

Of evening till the star of dawn may 

fail, 
Was interfused upon the silentness; 
The folded roses and the violets pale 

Heard her within their slumbers, the 

abyss 
Of heaven with all its planets; the dull 

ear 
Of the night-cradled earth; the loneliness 

Of the circumfluous waters, — every 

sphere 
And every flower and beam and cloud 

and wave, 
And every wind of the mute atmosphere, 

And every beast stretcht in its rugged 

cave. 
And every bird lulled on its mossy bough, 
And every silver moth fresh from the 

grave, 

Which is its cradle — ever from below 
Aspiring like one who loves too fair, too 

far. 
To be consumed within the purest glow 

Of one serene and unapproached star, 
As if it were a lamp of earthly light. 
Unconscious, as some human lovers are. 

Itself how low, how high beyond all 

height 
The heaven where it would perish ! — 

and every form 
That worshippt in the temple of the 

night 

Was awed into delight, and by the charm 
Girt as with an interminable zone, 
Whilst that sweet bird, whose music was 
a storm 



Of sound, shook forth the dull oblivion 
Out of their dreams; harmony became 

love 
In every soul but one. 



And so this man returned with axe and 

saw 
At evening close from killing the tall 

treen, 
The soul of whom by nature's gentle law 

Was each a wood-nymph, and kept ever 

green 
The pavement and the roof of the wild 

copse, 
Checkering the sunlight of the blue serene 

With jagged leaves, — and from the for- 
est tops 

Singing the winds to sleep — or weeping 
oft 

Fast showers of aerial water drops 

Into their mother's bosom, sweet and soft, 
Nature's pure tears which have no bitter- 
ness; — 
Around the cradles of the birds aloft 

They spread themselves into the loveli- 
ness 

Of fan-like leaves, and over pallid flow- 
ers 

Hang like moist clouds: — or, where 
high branches kiss. 

Make a green space among the silent 

bowers, 
Like a vast fane in a metropolis, 
Surrounded by the columns and the 

towers 

All overwrought with branch-like trace- 
ries 
In which there is religion — and the mute 
Persuasion of unkindled melodies. 

Odors and gleams and murmurs, which 

the lute 
Of the blind pilot-spirit of the blast 
Stirs as it sails, now grave and now acute, 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1818. 



515 



Wakening the leaves and waves, ere it 

has past 
To such brief unison as on the brain 
One tone, which never can recur, has 

cast, 
One accent never to return again. 



The world is full of Woodmen who expel 
Love's gentle Dryads from the haunts of 

hfe. 
And vex the nightingales in every dell. 



, MARENGHI.i 



Let those who pine in pride or in re- 
venge, 
Or think that ill for ill should be repaid, 
Or barter wrong for wrong, until the 
exchange 
Ruins the merchants of such thriftless 
trade, 
Visit the tower of Vado, and unlearn 
Such bitter faith beside Marenghi's urn. 

II. 

A massy tower yet overhangs the town, 
A scattered group of ruined dwellings 
now. 



III. 

Another scene ere wise Etruria knew 
Its second ruin thro' internal strife, 
And tyrants thro' the breach of discord 

threw 
The chain which binds and kills. As 

death to life. 
As winter to fair fiowers (tho' some be 

poison) 
So Monarchy succeeds to Freedom's 

foison. 



1 This fragment refers to an event told in Sis- 
mondi's Histoire des Republiqiies ItalieJines, 
which occurred during the war when Florence 
finally subdued Pisa, and reduced it to a province 
[Mrs'. Shelley]. 



IV. 

In Pisa's church a cup of sculptured gold 
Was brimming with the blood of feuds 
forsworn 
At sacrament: more holy ne'er of old 
Etrurians mingled with the shades for- 
lorn 
Of moon-illumined forests. 



V. 

And reconciling factions wet their lips 
With that dread wine, and swear to 

keep each spirit 
Undarkened by their country's last 

eclipse. 



VI. 

Was Florence the liberticide? that band 
Of free and glorious brothers who had 
planted. 
Like a green isle mid iF^thiopian sand, 

A nation amid slaveries, disenchanted 
Of many impious faiths — wise, just — 

do they. 
Does Florence, gorge the sated tyrants' 
prey? 

VII. 

O foster-nurse of man's abandoned glory. 
Since Athens, its great mother, sunk 
in splendor; 

Thou shadowest forth that mighty shape 
in story, 
As ocean its wreckt fanes, severe yet 
tender : — 

The light-invested angel Poesy 

Was drawn from the dim world to wel- 
come thee. 

VIII. 

And thou in painting didst transcribe all 
taught 
By loftiest meditations; marble knew 
The sculptor's fearless soul — and as he 
wrought 
The grace of his own power and free- 
dom grew. 



5i6 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1818. 



And more than all, heroic, just, sublime, 
Thou wert among the false — was this 
thy crime? 

IX. 

Yes; and on Pisa's marble walls the 
twine 
Of direst weeds hangs garlanded — 
the snake 

Inhabits its wrecked palaces; — in thine 
A beast of subtler venom now doth 
make 

Its lair, and sits amid their glories over- 
thrown, 

And thus thy victim's fate is as thine 
own. 

X. 

The sweetest flowers are ever frail and 

rare. 
And love and freedom blossom but to 

wither; 
And good and ill like vines entangled 

are. 
So that their grapes may oft be pluckt 

together; — 
Divide the vintage ere thou drink, then 

make 
Thy heart rejoice for dead Marenghi's 

sake. 

XI. 

No record of his crime remains in story, 

But if the morning bright as evening 

shone, 

It was some high and holy deed, by glory 

Pursued into forgetfulness, which won 

From the blind crowd he made secure 

and free 
The patriot's meed, toil, death, and in- 
famy. 

XII. 

For when by sound of trumpet was de- 
clared 
A price upon his life, and there was set 
A penalty of blood on all who shared 

So much of water with him as might wet 
His lips, which speech divided not — he 

went 
Alone, as you may guess, to banishment. 



XIII. 

Amid the mountains, like a hunted beast, 
He hid himself, and hunger, toil, and 

cold. 
Month after month endured; it was a 

feast 
Whene'er he found those globes of 

deep-red gold 
Which in the woods the strawberry-tree 

doth bear. 
Suspended in their emerald atmosphere. 

XIV. 

And in the roofless huts of vast morasses, 

Deserted by the fever-stricken serf. 
All overgrown with reeds and long rank 

grasses, 
And hillocks heapt of moss-inwoven 

turf. 
And where the huge and speckled aloe 

made. 
Rooted in stones, a broad and pointed 

shade, 

XV. 

He housed himself. There is a point of 
strand 
Near Vado's tower and town; and on 
one side 

The treacherous marsh divides it from 
the land, 
Shadowed by pine and ilex forests 
wide, 

And on the other creeps eternally, 

Thro' muddy weeds, the shallow sul- 
len sea. 

XVI. 

Here the earth's breath is pestilence, and 
few 
But things whose nature is at war with 
life — 

Snakes and ill worms — endure its mor- 
tal dew. 
The trophies of the clime's victorious 
strife — 

White bones, and locks of dun and yel- 
low hair, 

And ringed horns which buffaloes did 
wear — 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1818. 



517 



XVII. 

And at the utmost point stood there 

The relics of a weed-inwoven cot, 
Thatcht with broad flags. An outlawed 
murderer 
Had lived seven days there; the pur- 
suit was hot 
When he was cold. The birds that 

were his grave 
Fell dead upon their feast in Vado's wave. 

XVIII. 

There must have lived within Marenghi's 
heart 
That fire, more warm and bright than 
life or hope, 

C Which to the martyr makes his dun- 
geon . . . 
More joyous than the heaven's majes- 
tic cope 

To his oppressor), warring with decay, — 

Or he could ne'er have lived years, day 
by day. 

XIX. 

Nor was his state so lone as you might 

think. 
He had tamed every newt and snake 

and toad, 
And every seagull which sailed down to 

drink 
Those . . . ere the death-mist went 

abroad. 
And each one, with peculiar talk and play. 
Wiled, not untaught, his silent time away. 



XX. 

And the marsh-meteors, like tame beasts, 
at night 
Came licking with blue tongues his 
veined feet; 

And he would watch them, as, like 
spirits bright, 
In many entangled figures quaint and 
sweet 

To some enchanted music they would 
dance — 

Until they vanisht at the first moon- 
glance. 



XXI. 

He mockt the stars by grouping on each 

weed 
The summer dewdrops in the golden 

dawn; 
And, ere the hoar-frost vanisht, he could 

read 
Its pictured footprints, as on spots of 

lawn 
Its delicate brief touch in silence weaves 
The likeness of the wood's remembered 

leaves. 



XXII. 

And many a fresh Spring-morn would he 
awaken — 
W^hile yet the unrisen sun made glow, 
like iron 

Quivering in crimson fire, the peaks un- 
shaken 
Of mountains and blue isles which did 
environ 

With air-clad crags that plain of land 
and s^, — 

And feel liberty. 

XXIII. 

And in the moonless nights, when the 
dim ocean 
Heaved underneath the heaven . . . 
Starting from dreams . , . 

Communed with the immeasurable 
world: 
And felt his life beyond his limbs dilated, 
Till his mind grew like that it contem- 
plated. 

XXIV. 

His food was the wild fig and strawberry; 
The milky pine-nuts which the autumnal 

blast 
Shakes into the tall grass; and such 

small fry 
As from the sea by winter-storms are 

cast; 
And the coarse bulbs of iris-flowers he 

found 
Knotted in clumps under the spongy 

ground. 



5i8 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1818. 



XXV. 

And so were kindled powers and thoughts 
which made 
His soUtude less dark. When mem- 
ory came 
(For years gone by leave each a deepen- 
ing shade), 
His spirit baskt in its internal flame — 
As, when the black storm hurries round 

at night. 
The fisher basks beside his red firelight. 

XXVI. 

Yet human hopes and cares and faiths 
and errors. 
Like billows unawakened by the wind, 
Slept in Marenghi still; but that all 
terrors, 
Weakness, and doubt, had withered in 
his mind. 
His couch . . . 



XXVII. 

And, when he saw beneath the sunset's 
planet 
A black ship walk over the crimson 
ocean, — 

Its pennons streaming on the blasts that 
fan it. 
Its sails and ropes all tense and with- 
out motion, 

Like the dark ghost of the unburied even' 

Striding across the orange -colored 
heaven, — 

XXVIII. 

The thought of his own kind who made 

the soul 
Which sped that winged shape thro' 

night and day, — 
The thought of his own country . . . 



SONNET. 

Lift not the painted veil which those 
who live 

Call Life : tho' unreal shapes be pic- 
tured there, 



And it but mimic all we would believe 
With colors idly spread, — behind, lurk 

Fear 
And Hope, twin destinies; who ever 

weave 
Their shadows, o'er the chasm, sightless 

and drear. 
I knew one who had lifted it — he sought, 
For his lost heart was tender, things to 

love, 
But found them not, alas ! nor was there 

aught 
The world contains, the which he could 

approve. 
Thro' the unheeding many he did 

move, 
A splendor among shadows, a bright 

blot 
Upon this gloomy scene, a Spirit that 

strove 
For truth, and like the Preacher found 

it not. 



FRAGMENT: TO BYRON. 

O MIGHTY mind, in whose deep stream 

this age 
Shakes like a reed in the unheeding storm, 
Why dost thou curb not thine own sacred 

rage? 



FRAGMENT: APPEAL TO 
SILENCE. 

Silence ! O well are Death and Sleep 

and Thou 
Three brethren named, the guardians 

gloomy-winged 
Of one abyss, where life, and truth, and 

joy 
Are swallowed up — yet spare me, Spirit, 

pity me, 
Until the sounds I hear become my 

soul, 
And it has left these faint and weary 

limbs. 
To track along the lapses of the air 
This wandering melody nntil it rests 
Among lone mountains in souk; . ^ < 



i 

I 
I 

\ 



FRAGMENT: THE STREAM'S 
MARGIN. 

The fierce beasts of the woods and wil- 
dernesses 

Track not the steps of him who drinks 
of it: 

For the light breezes, which forever fleet 

Around its margin, heap the sand thereon. 



FRAGMENT: A LOST LEADER 

My head is wild with weeping for a grief 
Which is the shadow of a gentle mind. 
I walk into the air (but no relief 

To seek, — or haply, if I sought, to 
find ; 
It came unsought); — to wonder that a 
chief 
Among men's spirits should be cold 
and blind. 



FRAGMENT: THE VINE AMID 
RUINS. 

Flourishing vine, whose kindling clus- 
ters glow 
Beneath the autumnal sun, none taste 
of thee; 
For thou dost shroud a ruin, and below 
The rotting bones of dead antiquity. 



NOTE ON POEMS OF 1818, BY 
MRS. SHELLEY. 

We often hear of persons disappointed 
by a first visit to Italy. This was not 
Shelley's case. The aspect of its nature, 
its sunny sky, its majestic storms, of the 
luxuriant vegetation of the country, and 
the noble marble-built cities, enchanted 
him. The sight of the works of art was 
full of enjoyment and wonder. He had 
not studied pictures or statues before; he 
now did so with the eye of taste, that re- 
ferred not to the rules of schools, but to 
those of Nature and truth. The first en- 
trance to Rome opened to him a scene of 



remains of antique grandeur that far 
surpassed his expectations; and the un- 
speakable beauty of Naples and its envi- 
rons added to the impression he received 
of the transcendent and glorious beauty 
of Italy. 

Our winter was spent at Naples. Here 
he wrote the fragments of " Marenghi " 
and " The Woodman and the Nightin- 
gale," which he afterwards threw aside. 
At this time, Shelley suffered greatly in 
health. He put himself under the care 
of a medical man, who promised great 
things, and made him endure severe bodily 
pain, without any good results. Constant 
and poignant physical suffering exhausted 
him; and though he preserved the appear- 
ance of cheerfulness, and often greatly 
enjoyed our wanderings in the environs 
of Naples, and our excursions on its sunny 
sea, yet many hours were passed when 
his thoughts, shadowed by illness, became 
gloomy, — and then he escaped to soli- 
tude, and in verses, which he hid for fear 
of wounding me, poured forth morbid 
but too natural bursts of discontent and 
sadness. One looks back with unspeak- 
able regret and gnawing remorse to such 
periods; fancying that, had one been more 
alive to the nature of his feelings, and 
more attentive to soothe them, such would 
not have existed. And yet, enjoying as 
he appeared to do every sight or influ- 
ence of earth and sky, it was difficult to 
imagine that any melancholy he showed 
was aught but the effect of the constant 
pain to which he was a martyr. 

We lived in utter solitude. And such 
is often not the nurse of cheerfulness; for 
then, at least with those who have been 
exposed to adversity, the mind broods 
over its sorrows too intently; while the 
society of the enlightened, the witty, and 
the wise, enables us to forget ourselves 
by making us the sharers of the thoughts 
of others, which is a portion of the phi- 
losophy of happiness. Shelley never 
liked society in numbers, — it harassed 
and wearied him; but neither did he like 
loneliness, and usually, when alone, shel- 
tered himself against memory and reflec- 
tion in a book. But, with one or two 
whom he'loved, he gave way to wild and 



520 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1819. 



joyous spirits, or in more serious conver- 
sation expounded his opinions with viva- 
city and eloquence. If an argument 
arose, no man ever argued better. He 
was clear, logical, and earnest in support- 
ing his own views; attentive, patient, and 
impartial while listening to those on the 
adverse side. Had not a wall of preju- 
dice been raised at this time between him 
and his countrymen, how many would 
have sought the acquaintance of one whom 
to know was to love and to revere ! How 
many of the more enlightened of his con- 
temporaries have since regretted that they 
did not seek him ! how very few knew 
his worth while he lived ! and, of those 
few, several were withheld by timidity 
or envy from declaring their sense of 
it. But no man was ever more enthusi- 
astically loved — more looked up to, as 
one superior to his fellows in intellectual 
endowments and moral worth, by the few 
who knew him well, and had sufficient 
nobleness of soul to appreciate his supe- 
riority. His excellence is now acknowl- 
edged; but, even while admitted, not 
duly appreciated. For who, except those 
who were acquainted with him, can ima- 
gine his unwearied benevolence, his gen- 
erosity, his systematic forbearance? And 
still less is his vast superiority in intellec- 
tual attainments sufficiently understood — 
his sagacity, his clear understanding, his 
learning, his prodigious memory. All 
these, as displayed in conversation, were 
known to few while he lived, and are now 
silent in the tomb: — 

" Ahi orbo mondo ingrato ! 
Gran cagion hai di dover pianger meco, 
Ch^ quel ben ch' era in te perdut' hai seco." 

POEMS WRITTEN IN 1819. 

LINES WRITTEN DURING THE 
CASTLEREAGH ADMINISTRA- 
TION. 

I. 

CORPSRS are cold in the tomb; 
Stones on the pavement are dumb; 
Abortions are dead in the womb, 



And their mothers look pale — like the 
white shore 
Of Albion, free no more. 



II. 



Her sons are as stones in the way — 
They are masses of senseless clay — 
They are trodden, and move not away, — - 
The abortion with which she travaileth 
Is Liberty, smitten to death. 

III. 
Then trample and dance, thou Op- 
pressor ! 
For thy victim is no redresser; 
Thou art sole lord and possessor 
Of her corpses, and clods, and abortions 
— they pave 
Thy path to the grave. 

IV. 
Hearest thou the festival din 
Of Death, and Destruction, and Sin, 
And Wealth crying Havoc ! within? 
'T is the bacchanal triumph which makes 
Truth dumb. 
Thine epithalamium. 



Ay, marry thy ghastly wife ! 
Let Fear and Disquiet and Strife 
Spread thy couch in the chamber of 
Life! 
Marry Ruin, thou Tyrant, and God be 
thy guide 
To the bed of the bride ! 

SONG TO THE MEN OF 
ENGLAND. 



Men of England, wherefore plough 
For the lords who lay ye low? 
Wherefore weave with toil and care 
The rich robes your tyrants wear? 

II. 

Wherefore feed, and clothe, and save, 
From the cradle to the grave. 
Those ungrateful drones who would 
Drain your sweat — nay, drink your 
blood ? 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1819. 



521 



III. 



Wherefore, Bees of England, forge 
Many a weapon, chain, and scourge. 
That these stingless drones may spoil 
The forced produce of your toil? 



IV. 



Have ye leisure, comfort, calm, 
Shelter, food, love's gentle balm? 
Or what is it ye buy so dear 
With your pain and with your fear? 



V. 



The seed ye sow, another reaps; 
The wealth ye find, another keeps; 
The robes ye weave, another wears; 
The arms ye forge, another bears. 



VI. 

Sow seed, — but let no tyrant reap; 
Find wealth, — let no impostor heap; 
Weave robes, — let not the idle wear; 
Forge arms, — in your defence to bear. 

VII. 

Shrink to your cellars, holes, and cells; 

In halls ye deck another dwells. 

Why shake the chains ye wrought? Ye 

see 
The steel ye tempered glance on ye. 

VIII. 

With plough and spade, and hoe and 

loom, 
Trace your grave, and build your tomb. 
And weave your winding-sheet, till fair 
England be your sepulchre. 



SIMILES FOR TWO POLITICAL 
CHARACTERS OF 18 19. 

(SIDMOUTH AND CASTLEREAGH. ) 



As from an ancestral oak 

Two empty ravens sound their clarion. 
Yell by yell, and croak by croak, 
When they scent the noonday smoke 
Of fresh human carrion : — 



As two gibbering night-birds flit 

From their bowers of deadly yew 
Thro' the night to frighten it. 
When the moon is in a fit. 

And the stars are none, or few : — 



III. 



As a shark and dog-fish wait 

Under an Atlantic isle. 
For the negro-ship, whose freight 
Is the theme of their debate. 

Wrinkling their red gills the while — 

IV. 

Are ye, two vultures, sick for battle, 

Two scorpions under one wet stone, 
Two bloodless wolves whose dry throats 

rattle, 
Two crows percht on the murrained 
cattle. 
Two vipers tangled into one. 



FRAGMENT: TO THE PEOPLE 
OF ENGLAND. 

People of England, ye who toil and 
groan. 

Who reap the harvests which are not 
your own. 

Who weave the clothes which your op- 
pressors wear, 

And for your own take the inclement air; 

Who build warm houses . . . 

And are like gods who give them all they 
have, 

And nurse them from the cradle to the 
grave . . . 



FRAGMENT: "WHAT MEN GAIN 
FAIRLY." 1 

What men gain fairly — that they should 

possess. 
And children may inherit idleness, 

1 Perhaps connected with that immediately 

preceding. — Ed. 



522 



POEMS IVRITTEN IN 1819. 



From him who earns it — This is under- 
stood: 
Private injustice may be general good.^ 
But he who gains by base and armed 

wrong, 
Or guilty fraud, or base compliances. 
May be despoiled; even as a stolen dress 
Is stript from a convicted thief, and he 
Left in the nakedness of infamy. 



A NEW NATIONAL ANTHEM. 

I. 
God prosper, speed, and save, 
God raise from England's grave 

Her murdered Queen ! 
Pave with swift victory 
The steps of Liberty, 
Whom Britons own to be 

Immortal Queen. 

II. 

See, she comes throned on high, 
On swift Eternity ! 

God save the Queen ! 
Millions on millions wait 
Firm, rapid, and elate. 
On her majestic state ! 

God save the Queen ! 

III. 
She is thine own pure soul 
Moulding the mighty whole, — 

God save the Queen ! 
She is thine own deep love 
Rained down from heaven above, — 
Wherever she rest or move, 
God save our Queen ! 

IV. 

Wilder her enemies 

In their own dark disguise, — 

God save our Queen ! 
All earthly things that dare 
Her sacred name to bear, 
Strip them, as kings are, bare; 

God save the Queen ! 



Be her eternal throne 
Built in our hearts alone — 
God save the Queen ! 



Let the oppressor hold 
Canopied seats of gold; 
She sits enthroned of old 

O'er our hearts Queen. 

VI. 

Lips toucht by seraphim 
Breathe out the choral hymn 

" God save the Queen ! ** 
Sweet as if angels sang, 
Loud as that trumpet's clang 
Wakening the world's dead gang, — 

God save the Queen ! 

SONNET: ENGLAND IN 18 19. 

An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying 
king, — 

Princes, the dregs of their dull race, 
who flow 

Thro' public scorn, — mud from a muddy 
spring, — 

Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor 
know. 

But leech-like to their fainting country 
cling. 

Till they drop, blind in blood, without a 
blow, — 

A people starved and stabbed in the un- 
filled field, — 

An army, which liberticide and prey 

Makes as a two-edged sword to all who 
wield 

Golden and sanguine laws which tempt 
and slay; 

Religion Christless, Godless — a book 
sealed; 

A Senate, — Time's worst statute unre- 
pealed, — 

Are graves, from which a glorious Phan- 
tom may 

Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day. 

AN ODE: TO THE ASSERTORS 
OF LIBERTY. 

Arise, arise, arise ! 
There is blood on the earth that denies 
ye bread; 

Be your wounds like eyes 
To weep for the dead, the dead, the 

dead. 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1819. 



523 



What other grief were it just to pay? 
Your sons, your wives, your brethren, 

were they; 
Who said they were slain on the battle 

day? 

Awaken, awaken, awaken ! 
The slave and the tyrant are twin-born 
foes; 
Be the cold chains shaken 
To the dust where your kindred re- 
pose, repose : 
Their bones in the grave will start and 

move. 
When they hear the voices of those they 

love, 
Most loud in the holy combat above. 

Wave, wave high the banner ! 
When Freedom is riding to conquest 
by: 
Tho' the slaves that fan her 
Be Famine and Toil, giving sigh for 
sigh. 
And ye who attend her imperial car. 
Lift not your hands in the banded war, 
But in her defence whose children ye are. 

Glory, glory, glory. 
To those who have greatly suffered and 
done ! 
Never name in story 
Was greater than that which ye shall 
have won. 
Conquerors have conquered their foes 

alone. 
Whose revenge, pride, and power they 

have overthrown : 
Ride ye, more victorious, over your own. 

Bind, bind every brow 
With crownals of violet, ivy, and pine, 

Hide the blood-stains now 
With hues which sweet nature has 
made divine : 
Green strength, azure hope, and eternity: 
But let not the pansy among them be; 
Ye were injured, and that means mem- 
ory. 

CANCELLED STANZA. 

Gather, O gather, 
Foeman and friend in love and peace ! 



Waves sleep together 
When the blasts that called them to 
battle, cease. 
For fangless power grown tame and mild 
Is at play with Freedom's fearless child — 
The dove and the serpent reconciled ! 

ODE TO HEAVEN. 

CHORUS OF SPIRITS. 

First Spirit. 

Palace-roof of cloudless nights ! 
Paradise of golden lights ! 

Deep, immeasurable, vast. 
Which art now, and which wert then 

Of the present and the past, 
Of the eternal where and when. 

Presence-chamber, temple, home, 

Ever-canopying dome, 

Of acts and ages yet to come ! 

Glorious shapes have life in thee, 
Earth, and all earth's company; 

Living globes which ever throng 
Thy deep chasms and wildernesses; 

And green worlds that glide along; 
And swift stars with flashing tresses; 

And icy moons most cold and bright, 

And mighty suns beyond the night, 

Atoms of intensest light. 

Even thy name is as a god. 

Heaven ! for thou art the abode 
Of that power which is the glass 

Wherein man his nature sees- 
Generations as they pass 

Worship thee with bended knees. 
Their unremaining gods and they 
Like a river roll away : 
Thou remainest such alway. 

Second Spirit. 

Thou art but the mind's first chamber, 

Round which its young fancies clamber, 
Like weak insects in a cave, 

Lighted up by stalactites; 
But the portal of the grave, 

Where a world of new delights 
Will make thy best glories seem 
But a dim and noonday gleam 
From the shadow of a dream ! 



524 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1819. 



Third Spirit. 

Peace ! the abyss is wreathed with scorn 
At your presumption, atom-born! 

What is heaven? and what are ye 
Who its brief expanse inherit? 

What are suns and spheres which flee 
With the instinct of that spirit 

Of which ye are but a part? 

Drops which Nature's mighty heart 

Drives through thinnest veins ! De- 
part ! 

What is heaven? a globe of dew, 

Filling in the morning new 

Some eyed flower whose young leaves 
waken 

On an unimagined world : 
Constellated suns unshaken, 

Orbits measureless, are furled 
In that frail and fading sphere. 
With ten millions gathered there, 
To tremble, gleam, and disappear. 



ODE TO THE WEST WIND.i 



O WILD West Wind, thou breath of 
Autumn's being, 

Thou, from whose unseen presence the 
leaves dead 

Are driven, like ghosts from an enchan- 
ter fleeing, 

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic 

red, 
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou. 
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed 



^ This poem was conceived and chiefly written 
in a wood that skirts the Arno, near Florence, 
and on a day when that tempestuous wind, whose 
temperature is at once mild and animating, was 
collecting the vapors which pour down the autum- 
nal rains. Tliey began, as I foresaw, at sunset 
with a violent tempest of hail and rain, attended 
by that magnificent thunder and lightning peculiar 
to the Cisalpine regions. 

The phenomenon alluded to at the conclusion 
of the third stanza is well known to naturalists. 
The vegetation at the bottom of the sea, of rivers, 
and of Takes, sympathizes with that of the land 
in the change of seasons, and is consequently in- 
fluenced by the winds which announce it. 



The winged seeds, where they lie cold 

and low. 
Each like a corpse within its grave, until 
Thine azure sister of the spring shall blow 

Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, 

and fill 
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed 

in air) 
With living hues and odors plain and 

hill: 

Wild Spirit, which art moving every- 
where; 
Destroyer and preserver; hear, O hear ! 



II. 



Thou on whose stream, mid the steep 

sky's commotion. 
Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves 

are shed. 
Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven 

and Ocean, 

Angels of rain and lightning : there are 

spread 
On the blue surface of thine airy surge. 
Like the bright hair uplifted from the 

head 

Of some fierce Maenad, even from the 

dim verge 
Of the horizon to the zenith's height 
The locks of the approaching storm. 

Thou dirge 

Of the dying year, to which this closing 

night 
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre, 
Vaulted with all thy congregated might 

Of vapors, from whose solid atmosphere 
Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst : 
Oh hear ! 

III. 

Thou who didst waken from his summer 

dreams 
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, 
Lulled by the coil of his crystalline 

streams, 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1819. 



525 



Beside a pumice isle in Baise's bay, 
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers 
Quivering within the wave's intenser 
day, 

All overgrown with azure moss and 

flowers 
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them ! 

Thou 
For whose path the Atlantic's level 

powers 

Cleave themselves into chasms, while far 

below 
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods 

which wear 
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know 

Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with 

fear. 
And tremble and despoil themselves. 

Oh hear ! 

IV. 

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear; 
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee; 
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and 
share 

The impulse of thy strength, only less 

free 
Than thou, O uncontrollable ! If even 
I were as in my boyhood, and could be 

The comrade of thy wanderings over 

heaven. 
As then, when to outstrip thy skyey 

speed 
Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne'er 

have striven 

As thus with thee in prayer in my sore 

need. 
Oh lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud ! 
I fall upon the thorns of life ! I bleed ! 

A heavyweight of hours has chained and 

bowed 
One too like thee: tameless, and swift, 

and proud. 

V. 
Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is: 
What if my leaves are falling like its 

own ! 
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies 



Will take from both a deep autumnal 

tone. 
Sweet tho' in sadness. Be thou, spirit 

fierce, 
My spirit ! Be thou me, impetuous one ! 

Drive my dead thoughts over the uni- 
verse 

Like withered leaves to quicken a new 
birth ! 

And, by the incantation of this verse, 

Scatter, as from an unextinguisht hearth 
Ashes and sparks, my words among man- 
kind ! 
Be thro' my lips to unawakened earth 

The trumpet of a. prophecy! O, wind, 
If Winter comes, can Spring be far be- 
hind? 



AN EXHORTATION. 

Chameleons feed on light and air: 

Poets' food is love and fame : 
If in this wide world of care 

Poets could but find the same 
With as little toil as they. 

Would they ever change their hue 

As the light chameleons do, 
Suiting it to every ray 
Twenty times a day? 

Poets are on this cold earth, 

As chameleons might be, 
Hidden from their early birth 

In a cave beneath the sea; 
Where light is, chameleons change: 

Where love is not, poets do: 

Fame is love disguised: if few 
Find either never think it strange 
That poets range. 

Yet dare not stain with wealth or power 

A poet's free and heavenly mind: 
If bright chameleons should devour 

Any food but beams and wind. 
They would grow as earthly soon 

As their brother lizards are. 

Children of a sunnier star, 
Spirits from beyond the moon, 
Oh refuse the boon ! 



526 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 18 19. 



THE INDIAN SERENADE. 



I ARISE from dreams of thee 
In the first sweet sleep of night, 
When the winds are breathing low, 
And the stars are shining bright : 
I arise from dreams of thee. 
And a spirit in my feet 
Hath led me — who knows how ! 
To thy chamber window, Sweet ! 



The wandering airs they faint 
On the dark, the silent stream — ■ 
And the champak odors fail 
Like sweet thoughts in a dream; 
The nightingale's complaint, 
It dies upon her heart; — 
As I must on thine. 
Oh ! beloved as thou art ! 

III. 

Oh lift me from the grass ! 
I die ! I faint ! I fail ! 
Let thy love in kisses rain 
On my lips and eyelids pale. 
My cheek is cold and white, alas ! 
My heart beats loud and fast; — 
Oh ! press it to thine own again, 
"Where it will break at last. 



CANCELLED PASSAGE OF THE 
INDIAN SERENADE. 

O PILLOW cold and wet with tears ! 
Thou breathest sleep no more ! 

TO SOPHIA [MISS STACEY]. 



Thou art fair, and few are fairer 
Of the nymphs of earth or ocean; 

They are robes that fit the wearer — 
Those soft limbs of thine, whose mo- 
tion 

Ever falls and shifts and glances 

As the life within them dances. 



II. 



Thy deep eyes, a double Planet, 
Gaze the wisest into madness 

With soft clear fire, — the winds that 
fan it 
Are those thoughts of tender gladness 

Which, like Zephyrs on the billow, 

Make thy gentle soul their pillow. 

III. 

If, whatever face thou paintest 

In those eyes grows pale with pleasure, 

If the fainting soul is faintest 

When it hears thy harp's wild measure, 

Wonder not that when thou speakest 

Of the weak my heart is weakest. 

IV. 

As dew beneath the wind of morning, 
As the sea which Whirlwinds waken, 

As the birds at thundei;'s warning. 
As aught mute yet deeply shaken, 

As one who feels an unseen spirit 

Is mine heart when thine is near it. 



TO WILLIAM SHELLEY. 

(With what truth I may say — ■ 

Roma! Roma! Roma! 
Non e pill come era prima !) 

I. 

My lost William, thou in whom 

Some bright spirit lived, and did 
That decaying robe consume 

Which its lustre faintly hid, 
Here its ashes find a tomb. 
But beneath this pyramid 
Thou art not — if a thing divine 
Like thee can die, thy funeral shrine 
Is thy mother's grief and mine, 

II. 

Where art thou, my gentle child ! 

Let me think thy spirit feeds, 
With its life intense and mild, 

The love of living leaves and weeds. 
Among these tombs and ruins wild; — 

Let me think that thro' low seeds 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1819. 



527 



Of sweet flowers and sunny grass, 
Into their hues and scents may pass 
A portion 

TO WILLIAM SHELLEY. 

Thy little footsteps on the sands 
Of a remote and lonely shore; 

The twinkling of thine infant hands, 
Where now the worm will feed no 
more : 

Thy mingled look of love and glee 

When we returned to gaze on thee. 



TO MARY SHELLEY. 

My dearest Mary, wherefore hast thou 
gone. 

And left me in this dreary world alone ! 

Thy form is here indeed — a lovely one — 

But thou art fled, gone down the dreary 
road. 

That leads to Sorrow's most obscure 
abode. 

Thou sittest on the hearth of pale de- 
spair, 

Where 

For thine own sake I cannot follow thee. 



TO MARY SHELLEY. 

The world is dreary. 

And I am weary 
Of wandering on without thee, Mary; 

A joy was erewhile 

In thy voice and thy smile, 
And 't is gone, when I should be gone 

too, Mary. 



ON THE MEDUSA OF LEONARDO 
DA VINCI IN THE FLOREN- 
TINE GALLERY. 



It lieth, gazing on the midnight sky. 
Upon the cloudy mountain peak su- 
pine; 

Below, far lands are seen tremblingly; 
Its horror and its beauty I divine. 



Upon its lips and eyelids seems to lie 
Loveliness like a shadow, from which 
shine, 
Fiery and lurid, struggling underneath, 
The agonies of anguish and of death. 



Yet it is less the horror than the grace 
Which turns the gazer's spirit into 
stone; 
Whereon the lineaments of that dead 
face 
Are graven, till the characters be grown 
Into itself, and thought no more can trace; 
'T is the melodious hue of beauty 
thrown 
Athwart the darkness and the glare of 

pain, 
W'hich humanize and harmonize the 
strain. 

in. 

And from its head as from one body grow, 

As grass out of a watery rock. 

Hairs which are vipers, and they curl 
and flow 
And their long tangles in each other 
lock. 
And with unending involutions show 
Their mailed radiance, as it were to 
mock 
The torture and the death within, and 

saw 
The solid air with many a ragged jaw. 

IV. 

And from a stone beside, a poisonous eft 
Peeps idly into those Gorgonian eyes; 
W^hilst in the air a ghastly bat, bereft 
Of sense, has flitted with a mad sur- 
prise 
Out of the cave this hideous light had 
cleft. 
And he comes hastening like a moth 
that hies 
After a taper; and the midnight sky 
Flares, alight more dread than obscurity. 



'Tis the tempestuous loveliness of terror; 
For from the serpents gleams a brazen 
glare 
Kindled by that inextricable error, 



528 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1819. 



Which makes a thrilling vapor of the 

air 

Become a and ever-shifting mirror 

Of all the beauty and the terror there — 

A woman's countenance, with serpent 

locks, 
Gazing in death on heaven from those 
wet rocks. 



LOVE'S PHILOSOPHY. 



The Fountains mingle with the River 

And the Rivers with the Ocean, 
The winds of Heaven mix for ever 

With a sweet emotion; 
Nothing in the world is single, 

All things by a law divine 
In one spirit meet and mingle. 

Why not I with thine? — 



See the mountains kiss high heaven 

And the waves clasp one another; 
No sister-flower would be forgiven 

If it disdained its brother, 
And the sunlight clasps the earth 

And the moonbeams kiss the sea: 
What is all this sweet work worth 

If thou kiss not me? 



FRAGMENT: "FOLLOW TO THE 
DEEP WOOD'S WEEDS." 

Follow to the deep wood's weeds, 

Follow to the wild briar dingle. 

Where we seek to intermingle, 

And the violet tells her tale 

To the odor-scented gale, 

For they two have enough to do 

Of such work as I and you. 



THE BIRTH OF PLEASURE. 

At the creation of the Earth 
Pleasure, that divinest birth, 
From the soil of Heaven did rise. 
Wrapt in sweet wild melodies — 



Like an exhalation wreathing 
To the sound of air low-breathing 
Thro' iEolian pines which make 
A shade and shelter to the lake 
Whence it rises soft and slow; 
Her life-breathing [limbs] did flow 
In the harmony divine 
Of an ever-lengthening line 
Which enwrapt her perfect form 
With a beauty clear and warm. 



FRAGMENT: LOVE THE 
UNIVERSE. 

And who feels discord now or sorrow? 

Love is the universe to-day — 
These are the slaves of dim to-morrow, 

Darkening Life's labyrinthine way. 



FRAGMENT: " A GENTLE STORY 
OF TWO LOVERS YOUNG." 

A GENTLE story of two lovers young. 
Who met in innocence and died in sor- 
row. 
And of one selfish heart, whose rancor 
clung 
Like curses on them; are ye slow to 
borrow. 
The lore of truth from such a tale? 
Or in this world's deserted vale. 
Do ye not see a star of gladness 
Pierce the shadow of its sadness. 
When ye are cold, that love is a light 
sent 
From Heaven, which none shall quench, 
to cheer the innocent? 



FRAGMENT: LOVE'S ATMOS- 
PHERE. 

There is a warm and gentle atmosphere 
About the form of one we love, and 

thus 
As in a tender mist our spirits are 
Wrapt in the of that which is 

to us 
The health of life's own life. 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1819. 



529 



FRAGMENT: FELLOWSHIP OF 
SOULS. 

I AM as a spirit who has dwelt 
Within his heart of hearts, and I have 

felt 
His feelings, and have thought his 

thoughts, and known 
The inmost converse of his soul, the 

tone 
Unheard but in the silence of his blood. 
When all the pulses in their multitude 
Image the^ trembling calm of summer 

se^aS: 
I have unlockt the golden melodies 
Of his deep soul, as with a master-key, 
And loosened them and bathed myself 

therein — 
« Even as an eagle in a thunder-mist 
Clothing his wings with lightning. . 



FRAGMENT: REMINISCENCE 
AND DESIRE. 

Is it that in some brighter sphere 
We part from friends we meet with here? 
Or do we see the Future pass 
Over the Present's dusky glass? 
Or what is that that makes us seem 
To patch up fragments of a dream. 
Part of which comes true, and part 
Beats and trembles in the heart ?j' 



FRAGMENT: FOREBODINGS. 

Is not to-day enough? Why do I peer 

Into the darkness of the day to come? 
Is not to-morrow even «is yesterday? 
And will the day that follows change 
thy doom? 
Few flowers grow upon thy wintry way; 
And who waits for thee in that cheer- 
less home 
Whence thou hast fled, whither thou must 

return 
Charged with the load that makes thee 
faint and mourn? 



FRAGMENT: VISITATIONS OF 
CALM THOUGHTS. 

Ye gentle visitations of calm thought — 
Moods like the memories of happier 

earth. 
Which come arrayed in thoughts of lit- 
tle worth. 
Like stars in clouds by the weak winds 
enwrought, 
But that the clouds depart and stars 
remain. 
While they remain, and ye, alas, depart ! 



FRAGMENT: POETRY AND 
MUSIC. 

How sweet it is to sit and read the tales 
Of mighty poets and to hear the while 

Sweet music, which when the attention 
fails 
Fills the dim pause — ^ 



FRAGMENT: THE TOMB OF 
MEMORY. 

And where '\% truth? On tombs? for 
such to thee 

Has been my heart — and thy dead 
memory 

Has lain from childhood, many a change- 
ful year — 

Unchangingly preserved and buried there. 



FRAGMENT: SONG OF THE 
FURIES. 



When a lover clasps his fairest, 
Then be our dread sport the rarest, 
Their caresses were like the chaff 
In the tempest, and be our laugh 
His despair — her epitaph ! 



530 



ruiLiyj:^, wki 1 1 niw iiv 1519. 



II. 



When a mother clasps her child, 
Watch till dusty Death has piled 
His cold ashes on the clay; 
She has loved it many a day — 
She remains, — it fades away. 



FRAGMENT: "WAKE THE 
SERPENT NOT." 

Wake the serpent not — lest he 
Should not know the way to go, — 
Let him crawl which yet lies sleeping 
Thro' the deep grass of the meadow; 
Not a bee shall hear him creeping, 
Not a may- fly shall awaken 
From its cradling blue-bell shaken, 
Not the starlight as he' s sliding 
Thro' the grass with silent gliding. 



FRAGMENT: RAIN AND WIND. 

The fitful alternations of the rain, 
When the chill wind, languid as with pain 
Of its own heavy moisture, here and 

there 
Drives thro' the gray and beamless at- 
mosphere. 



FRAGMENT: A TALE UNTOLD. 

One sung of thee who left the tale un- 
told. 
Like the false dawns which perish in 
the bursting : 
Like empty cups of wrought and daedal 
gold, 
Which mock the lips with air, when 
they are thirsting. , 



FRAGMENT: TO ITALY. 

As the sunrise to the night. 

As the north wind to the clouds, 

As the earthquake's fiery flight, 
Ruining mountain solitudes, 

Everlasting Italy, 

Be those hopes and fears on thee. 



FRAGMENT: WINE OF 
EGLANTINE. 

I AM drunk with the honey wine 

Of the noon-unfolded eglantine. 

Which fairies catch in hyacinth bowls: — 

The bats, the dormice, and the moles 

Sleep in the walls or under the sward 

Of the desolate Castle yard; 

And when 't is spilt on the summer earth. 

Or its fumes arise among the dew. 
Their jocund dreams are full of mirth, 
They gibber their joy in sleep; for few 
Of the fairies bear those bowls so new ! 



FRAGMENT: A ROMAN'S 
CHAMBER. 

I. 

In the cave which wild weeds cover 
Wait for thine ethereal lover; 
For the pallid moon is waning, 

O'er the spiral cypress hanging. 
And the moon no cloud is staining. 

II. 

It was once a Roman's chamber, 
Where he kept his darkest revels. 
And the wild weeds twine and clam- 
ber; 
It was then a chasm for devils. 



FRAGMENT: ROME AND 
NATURE. 

Rome has fallen, ye see it lying 
Heapt in undistinguisht ruin: 
Nature is alone undying. 

VARIATION OF THE LYRIC TO 
THE MOON. 

(^Prometheus Unbound, ACT IV.) 

As a violet's gentle eye 
Gazes on the azure sky 
Until its hue grows like what it beholds: 



As a gray and empty mist 
Lies like solid amethyst 
Over the western mountain it enfolds, 
When the sunset sleeps 
Upon its snow; 
As a strain of sweetest sound 
Wraps itself the wind around 
Until the voiceless wind be music too; 
As avight dark, vain, and dull, 
Basking in what is beautiful, 
Is full of light and love. 
1819. 

CANCELLED STANZA OF THE 
MASK OF ANARCHY. 

(for which stanzas LXVni, LXIX HAVE 
BEEN SUBSTITUTED.) 

From the cities where from caves, 
Like the dead from putrid graves, 
Troops of starvelings gliding come, 
Living Tenants of a tomb. 

NOTE BY MRS. SHELLEY. 

Shelley loved the People; and re- 
spected them as often more virtuous, as 
ilways more suffering, and therefore more 
deserving of sympathy, than the great. 
He believed that a clash between the two 
classes of society was inevitable, and he 
eagerly ranged himself on the people's 
side. He had an idea of publishing a 
series of poems adapted expressly to 
:ommemorate their circumstances and 
vrongs. He wrote a few; but, in those 
lays of prosecution for libel, they could 
lot be printed. They are not among the 
)est of his productions, a writer being 
ilways shackled when he endeavors to 
vrite down to the comprehension of those 
vho could not understand or feel a highly 
maginative style; but they show his earn- 
estness, and with what heartfelt compas- 
sion he went home to the direct point of 
njury — that oppression is detestable as 
Deing the parent of starvation, nakedness, 
ind ignorance. Besides these outpour- 
ngs of compassion and indignation, he 
lad meant to adorn the cause he loved 
vith loftier poetry of glory and triumph; 



such is the scope of the " Ode to the As- 
sertors of Liberty." He sketched also 
a new version of our national anthem, as 
addressed to Liberty. 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1820. 

THE SENSITIVE PLANT. 

Part First. 

A Sensitive Plant in a garden grew. 
And the young winds fed it with silver 

dew, 
And it opened its fan-like leaves to the 

light. 
And closed them beneath the kisses of 

night. 

And the Spring arose on the garden fair. 
Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere ; 
And each flower and herb on Earth's 

dark breast 
Rose from the dreams of its wintry rest. 

But none ever trembled and panted with 
bliss 

In the garden, the field, or the wilder- 
ness. 

Like a doe in the noontide with love's 
sweet want. 

As the companionless Sensitive Plant. 

The snowdrop, and then the violet. 

Arose from the ground with warm rain 
wet. 

And their breath was mixt with fresh 
odor, sent 

From the turf, like the voice and the in- 
strument. 

Then the pied wind-flowers and the tulip 

tall. 
And narcissi, the fairest among them all, 
W^ho gaze on their eyes in the stream's 

recess. 
Till they die of their own dear loveliness; 

And the Naiad-like lily of the vale. 
Whom youth makes so fair and passion 
so pale, 



532 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1820. 



That the light of its tremulous bells is 

seen 
Thro' their pavilions of tender green; 

And the hyacinth purple and white and 

blue, 
Which flung from its bells a sweet peal 

anew 
Of music so delicate, soft, and intense. 
It was felt like an odor within the sense; 

And the rose like a nymph to the bath 

addrest. 
Which unveiled the depth of her glowing 

breast, 
Till, fold after fold, to the fainting air 
The soul of her beauty and love lay bare : 

And the wand-like lily, which lifted up. 
As a Maenad, its moonlight-colored cup. 
Till the fiery star, which is its eye, 
Gazed thro' clear dew on the tender 
sky; 

And the jessamine faint, and the sweet 

tuberose. 
The sweetest flower for scent that blows; 
And all rare blossoms from every clime 
Grew in that garden in perfect prime. 

And on the stream whose inconstant 
bosom 

Was prankt under boughs of embower- 
ing blossom. 

With golden and green light, slanting 
thro' 

Their heaven of many a tangled hue. 

Broad water-lilies lay tremulously, 
And starry river-buds glimmered by. 
And around them the soft stream did 

glide and dance 
With a motion of sweet sound and 

radiance. 

And the sinuous paths of lawn and of 

moss. 
Which led thro' the garden along and 

across. 
Some open at once to the sun and the 

breeze. 
Some lost among bowers of blossoming 

trees. 



Were all paved with daisies and delicate 
bells 

As fair as the fabulous asphodels, 

And flowrets which drooping as day 
droopt too 

Fell into pavilions, white, purple, and 
blue. 

To roof the glow-worm from the even- 
ing dew. 

And from this undefiled Paradise 

The flowers (as an infant's awakening 

eyes 
Smile on its mother, whose singing sweet 
Can first lull, and at last must awaken it). 

When Heaven's blithe winds had un- 
folded them, 
As mine-lamps enkindle a hidden gem. 
Shone smiling to Heaven, and every one 
Shared joy in the light of the gentle sun; 

For each one was interpenetrated 

With the light and the odor its neighbor 
shed. 

Like young lovers whom youth and love 
make dear 

Wrapt and filled by their mutual atmos- 
phere. 

But the Sensitive Plant which could give 

small fruit 
Of the love which it felt from the leaf to 

the root, 
Received more than all, it loved more 

than ever. 
Where none wanted but it, could belong 

to the giver. 

For the Sensitive Plant has no bright 

flower; 
Radiance and odor are not its dower; 
It loves, even like Love, its deep heart 

is full. 
It desires what it has not, the beautiful ! 

The light winds which from unsustain- 

ing wings 
Shed the music of many murmurings; 
The beams which dart from many a star 
Of the flowers whose hues they bear afar; 

The plumed insects swift and free, 
Like golden boats on a sunny sea. 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1820. 



533 



Laden with light and odor, which pass 
Over the gleam of the living grass; 

The unseen clouds of the dew, which lie 
Like fire in the flowers till the sun rides 

high, 
Then wander like spirits among the 

spheres, 
Each cloud faint with the fragrance it 

bears; 

The quivering vapors of dim noontide, 
Which like a sea o'er the warm earth 

glide, 
In which every sound, and odor, and 

beam, 
Move, as reeds in a single stream; 

Each and all like ministering angels were 
For the Sensitive Plant sweet joy to bear, 
Whilst the lagging hours of the day 

went by 
Like windless clouds o'er a tender sky. 

And when evening descended from 

heaven above, 
And the Earth was all rest, and the air 

was all love. 
And delight, tho' less bright, was far 

more deep 
And the day's veil fell from the world of 

sleep. 

And the beasts, and the birds, and the 
insects were drowned 

In an ocean of dreams without a sound; 

Whose waves never mark, tho' they ever 
impress 

The light sand which paves it, conscious- 
ness; 

(Only overhead the sweet nightingale 
Ever sang more sweet as the day might 

fail. 
And snatches of its Elysian chant 
Were mixed with the dreams of the 

Sensitive Plant.) 

The Sensitive Plant was the earliest 
Up-gathered into the bosom of rest; 
A sweet child weary of its delight, 
The feeblest and yet the favorite, 
Cradled within the embrace of night. 



Part Second. 

There was a Power in this sweet place, 
An Eve in this Eden; a ruling grace 
Which to the flowers did they waken or 

dream. 
Was as God is to the starry scheme. 

A Lady, the wonder of her kind. 
Whose form was upborne by a lovely 

mind 
Which, dilating, had moulded her mien 

and motion 
Like a sea-flower unfolded beneath the 

ocean, 

Tended the garden from morn to even: 
And the meteors of that sublunar heaven, 
Like the lamps of the air when night 

walks forth, 
Laught round her footsteps up from the 

Earth ! 

She had no companion of mortal race, 

But her tremulous breath and her flush- 
ing face 

Told, whilst the morn kist the sleep from 
her eyes 

That her dreams were less slumber than 
Paradise : 

As if some bright Spirit for her sweet 

sake 
Had deserted heaven while the stars 

were awake, 
As if yet around her he lingering were, 
Tho' the veil of daylight concealed him 

from her. 

Her step seemed to pity the grass it prest; 
You might hear by the heaving of her 

breast, 
That the coming and going of the wind 
Brought pleasure there and left passion 

behind. 

And wherever her airy footstep trod, 
Her trailing hair from the grassy sod 
Erased its light vestige, with shadowy 

sweep, 
Like a sunny storm o'er the dark green 

deep. 



534 



POEMS WRITTEN IiV 1820. 



I doubt not the flowers of that garden 

sweet 
Rejoiced in the sound of her gentle 

feet; 
I doubt not they felt the spirit that came 
From her glowing fingers thro' all their 

frame. 

She sprinkled bright water from the 

stream 
On those that were faint with the sunny 

beam; 
And out of the cups of the heavy flowers 
She emptied the rain of the thunder 

showers. 

She lifted their heads with her tender 

hands, 
And sustained them with rods and osier 

bands; 
If the flowers had been her own infants 

she 
Could never have nurst them more 

tenderly. 

And all killing insects and gnawing 

worms, 
And things of obscene and unlovely 

forms, 
She bore in a basket of Indian woof, 
Into the rough woods far aloof. 

In a basket, of grasses and wild-flowers 

full. 
The freshest her gentle hands could pull 
For the poor banisht insects, whose 

intent, 
Altho' they did ill, was innocent. 

But the bee and the beamlike ephemeris 
Whose path is the lightning's, and soft 

moths that kiss 
The sweet lips of the flowers, and harm 

not, did she 
Make her attendant angels be. 

And many an antenatal tomb. 

Where butterflies dream of the life to 

come, 
She left clinging round the smooth and 

dark 
Edge of the odorous cedar bark. 
This fairest creature from earliest spring 



Thus moved thro' the garden minis- 
tering 
All the sweet season of summer tide, 
And ere the first leaf looked brown — 
she died ! 

Part Third. 

Three days the flowers of the garden fair, 
Like stars when the moon is awakened, 

were, 
Or the waves of Baiae, ere luminous 
She floats up thro' the smoke of 

Vesuvius. 

And on the fourth, the Sensitive Plant 
Felt the sound of the funeral chant. 
And the steps of the bearers, heavy and 

slow. 
And the sobs of the mourners deep and 

low; 

The weary sound and the heavy breath, 
And the silent motions of passing death. 
And the smell, cold, oppressive, and 

dank. 
Sent thro' the pores of the coffin 

plank; 

The dark grass, and the flowers among 

the grass. 
Were bright with tears as the crowd did 

pass; 
From their sighs the wind caught a 

mournful tone, 
And sate in the pines, and gave groan 

for groan. 

The garden, once fair, became cold and 

foul. 
Like the corpse of her who had been its 

soul, 
Which at first was lovely as if in sleep, 
Then slowly changed, till it grew a heap 
To make men tremble who never weep. 

Swift summer into the autumn flowed, 
And frost in the mist of the morning rode, 
Tho' the noonday sun looked clear and 

bright. 
Mocking the spoil of the secret night. 
The rose leaves, like flakes of crimson 

snow. 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1820. 



535 



*i Paved the turf and the moss below. 
The Hlies were drooping, and white, and 

wan, 
^Like the head and the skin of a dying 
man. 

And Indian plants, of scent and hue 
The sweetest that ever were fed on dew, 
! Leaf by leaf, day after day, 
; Were massed into the common clay. 

And the leaves, brown, yellow, and gray, 

and red, 
And white with the whiteness of what is 

dead, 
Like troops of ghosts on the dry wind 

past; 
Their whistling noise made the birds 

aghast. 

And the gusty winds waked the winged 

seeds, 
Out of their birthplace of ugly weeds. 
Till they clung round many a sweet 

flower's stem, 
Which rotted into the earth with them. 

The water-blooms under the rivulet 
Fell from the stalks on which they were 

set; 
And the eddies drove them here and 

there, 
As the winds did those of the upper air. 

Then the rain came down, and the 

broken stalks. 
Were bent and tangled across the walks; 
And the leafless network of parasite 

bowers 
Massed into ruin; and all sweet flowers. 

Between the time of the wind and the 

snow, 
All loathliest weeds began to grow, 
Whose coarse leaves were splasht with 

many a speck, 
Like the water-snake's belly and the 

toad's back. 

And thistles, and nettles, and darnels 
rank, 

And the dock, and henbane, and hem- 
lock dank. 



Stretcht out its long and hollow shank. 
And stifled the air till the dead wind 
stank. 

And plants at whose names the verse 
feels loath, 

Filled the place with a monstrous under- 
growth, 

Prickly, and pulpous, and blistering, and 
blue, 

Livid, and starred with a lurid dew. 

And agarics and fungi, with mildew and 
mould 

Started like mist from the wet ground 
cold; 

Pale, fleshy, as if the decaying dead 

With a spirit of growth had been ani- 
mated ! 

Spawn, weeds, and filth, a leprous scum, 
Made the running rivulet thick and dumb. 
And at its outlet flags huge as stakes 
Dammed it up with roots knotted like 
water-snakes. 

And hour by hour, when the air was still, 
The vapors arose which have strength 

to kill: 
At morn they were seen, at noon they 

were felt, 
At night they were darkness no star 

could melt. 

And unctuous meteors from spray to spray 
Crept and flitted in broad noonday 
Unseen; every branch on which they 

alit 
By a venomous blight was burned and 

bit. 

The Sensitive Plant like one forbid 
Wept, and the tears within each lid 
Of its folded leaves which together grew 
Were changed to a blight of frozen glue. 

For the leaves soon fell, and the branches 

soon 
By the heavy axe of the blast were hewn; 
The sap shrank to the root thro' every 

pore. 
As blood to a heart that will beat no 

more. 



536 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1820. 



For winter came : the wind was his 

whip: 
One choppy finger was on his lip : 
He had torn the cataracts from the hills 
And they clankt at his girdle like man- 
acles; 

His breath was a chain which without a 
sound 

The earth, and the air, and the water 
bound; 

He came, fiercely driven, in his chariot- 
throne 

By the tenfold blasts of the Arctic zone. 

Then the weeds which were forms of 

living death 
Fled from the frost to the earth beneath. 
Their decay and sudden flight from frost 
Was but like the vanishing of a ghost ! 

And under the roots of the Sensitive 

Plant 
The moles and the dormice died for want ; 
The birds dropt stiff from the frozen 

air 
And were caught in the branches naked 

and bare. 

First there came down a thawing rain 
And its dull drops froze on the boughs 

again, 
Then there steamed up a freezing dew 
Which to the drops of the thaw-rain 

grew; 

And a northern whirlwind, wandering 

about 
Like a wolf that had smelt a dead child 

out. 
Shook the boughs thus laden, and heavy 

and stiff, 
And snapt them off with his rigid 

griff. 

When winter had gone and spring came 

back 
The Sensitive Plant was a leafless wreck; 
But the mandrakes, and toadstools, and 



Conclusion. 

Whether the Sensitive Plant, or that 
Which within its boughs like a spirit sat 
Ere its outward form had known decay, 
Now felt this change, I cannot say. 

Whether that lady's gentle mind, 
No longer with the form combined 
Which scattered love, as stars do light. 
Found sadness, where it left delight, 

I dare not guess; but in this life 
Of error, ignorance, and strife. 
Where nothing is, but all things seem, 
And we the shadows of the dream, 

It is a modest creed, and yet 

Pleasant if one considers it. 

To own that death itself must be, 

Like all the rest, a mockery. I 

That garden sweet, that lady fair, \ 

And all sweet shapes and odors there, J 
In truth have never past away : " 

'T is we, 't is ours, are changed; not 
they. 

For love and beauty and delight, '[. 

There is no death nor change : their 

might ^ 

Exceeds our organs, which endure 
No light, being themselves obscure. 



CANCELLED PASSAGE. 

Their moss rotted off them, flake by 
flake. 

Till the thick stalk stuck like a murder- 
er's stake. 

Where rags of loose flesh yet tremble on 
high. 

Infecting the winds that wander by. 



A VISION OF THE SEA. 

'T IS the terror of tempest. The rags 

of the sail 
Are flickering in ribbons within the fierce 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1820. 



537 



And when lightning is loost, like a 
deluge from heaven, 

She sees the black trunks of the water- 
spouts spin, 

And bend, as if heaven was ruining in, 

Which they seemed to sustain with their 
terrible mass 

As if ocean had sunk from beneath them : 
they pass 

To their graves in the deep with an earth- 
quake of sound, 

And the waves and the thunders made 
silent around 

Leave the wind to its echo. The vessel, 
now tost 

Thro' the low-trailing rack of the tem- 
pest, is lost 

In the skirts of the thunder-cloud: now 
down the sweep 

Of the wind-cloven wave to the chasm 
of the deep 

It sinks, and the walls of the watery 
vale 

Whose depths of dread calm are un- 
moved by the gale. 

Dim mirrors of ruin hang gleaming 
about ; 

While the surf, like a chaos of stars, like 
a rout 

Of death-flames, like whirlpools of fire- 
fiowing iron 

With splendor and terror the black ship 
environ. 

Or like sulphur-flakes hurled from amine 
of pale fire 

In fountains spout o'er it. In many a 
spire 

The pyramid-billows with white points of 
brine 

In the cope of the lightning inconstantly 
shine. 

As piercing the sky from the floor of the 
sea. 

The great ship seems splitting ! it cracks 
as a tree. 

While an earthquake is splintering its 
root, ere the blast 

Of the whirlwind that stript it of 
branches has past. 

The intense thunder-balls which are rain- 



The chinks suck destruction. The heavy 
dead hulk 

On the living sea rolls an inanimate 
bulk. 

Like a corpse on the clay which is hun- 
gering to fold 

Its corruption around it. Meanwhile, 
from the hold. 

One deck is burst up by the waters below, 

And it splits like the ice when the thaw- 
breezes blow 

O'er the lakes of the desert ! Who sit 
on the other? 

Is that all the crew that lie burying each 
other. 

Like the dead in a breach, round the 
foremast? Are those 

Twin tigers, who burst, when the waters 
arose. 

In the agony of terror, their chains in the 
hold; 

(What now makes them tame, is what 
then made them bold;) 

Who crouch, side by side, and have 
driven, like a crank, 

The deep grip of their claws thro' the 
vibrating plank. 

Are these all? Nine weeks the tall ves- 
sel had lain 

On the windless expanse of the watery 
plain. 

Where the death-darting sun cast no 
shadow at noon. 

And there seemed to be fire in the beams 
of the moon. 

Till a lead-colored fog gathered up from 
the deep 

Whose breath was quick pestilence ; then, 
the cold sleep 

Crept, like blight thro' the ears of a 
thick field of corn, 

O'er the populous vessel. And even and 
morn. 

With their hammocks for coflfins the sea- 
men aghast 

Like dead men the dead limbs of their 
comrades cast 

Down the deep, which closed on them 
above and around. 

And the sharks and the dog-fish their 



538 



POEMS WRITTEIV IN 1820. 



From God on their wilderness. One 

after one 
The mariners died; on the eve of this day, 
When the tempest was gathering in 

cloudy array, 
But seven remained. Six the thunder 

has smitten. 
And they lie black as mummies on which 

Time has written 
His scorn of the embalmer; the seventh, 

from the deck 
An oak-splinter pierced thro' his breast 

and his back, 
And hung out to the tempest, a wreck 

on the wreck. 
No more? At the helm sits a woman 

more fair 
Than heaven, when, unbinding its star- 
braided hair, 
It sinks with the sun on the earth and 

the sea. 
She clasps a bright child on her upgath- 

ered knee, 
It laughs at the lightning, it mocks the 

mixed thunder 
Of the air and the sea, with desire and 

with wonder 
It is beckoning the tigers to rise and 

come near, 
It would play with those eyes where the 

radiance of fear 
Is outshining the meteors; its bosom 

beats high. 
The heart-fire of pleasure has kindled 

its eye; 
While its mother's is lustreless. '* Smile 

not, my child, 
But sleep deeply and sweetly, and so be 

beguiled 
Of the pang that awaits us, whatever 

that be. 
So dreadful since thou must divide it 

with me ! 
Dream, sleep ! This pale bosom thy 

cradle and bed, 
Will it rock thee not, infant? 'Tis beat- 
ing with dread ! 
Alas ! what is life, what is death, what 

are we, 
Thar when the shin sinks w^e no lonp^er 



To be after life what we have been be- 
fore? 

Not to touch those sweet hands? Not 
to look on those eyes. 

Those lips, and that hair, all the smiling 
disguise 

Thou yet wearest, sweet spirit, which I, 
day by day. 

Have so long called my child, but which 
now fades away 

Like a rainbow, and I the fallen show- 
er? " Lo ! the ship 

Is settling, it topples, the leeward ports 
dip; 

The tigers leap up when they feel the 
slow brine 

Crawling inch by inch on them, hair, 
ears, limbs, and eyne. 

Stand rigid with horror; a loud, long, 
hoarse cry 

Bursts at once from their vitals tremen- 
dously. 

And 't is borne down the mountainous 
vale of the wave. 

Rebounding, like thunder, from crag to 
cave, 

Mixt with the clash of the lashing rain. 

Hurried on by the might of the hurri- 
cane: 

The hurricane came from the west, and 
past on 

By the path of the gate of the eastern 
sun. 

Transversely dividing the stream of the 
storm ; 

As an arrowy serpent, pursuing the form 

Of an elephant, bursts thro* the brakes 
of the waste. 

Black as a cormorant the screaming blast, 

Between ocean and heaven, like an 
ocean, past. 

Till it came to the clouds on the verge of 
the world 

Which, based on the sea and to heaven 
upcurled. 

Like columns and walls did surround and 
sustain 

The dome of the tempest; it rent them 
in twain, 

As a flood rends its barriers of mountain- 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1820. 



539 



Like the stones of a temple ere earth- 
quake has past, 

Like the dust of its fall, on the whirl- 
wind are cast; 

They are scattered like foam on the tor- 
rent; and where 

The wind has burst out from the chasm, 
from the air 

Of clear morning, the beams of the 
sunrise flow in. 

Unimpeded, keen, golden, and crystal- 
line, 

Banded armies of light and of air; at 
one gate 

They encounter, but interpenetrate. 

And that breach in the tempest is widen- 
ing away, 

And the caverns of cloud are torn up by 
the day. 

And the fierce winds are sinking with 
weary wings 

Lulled by the motion and murmur- 
ings, 

And the long glassy heave of the rocking 
sea, 

And overhead glorious, but dreadful to 
see 

The wrecks of the tempest, like vapors 
of gold, 

Are consuming in sunrise. The heapt 
waves behold 

The deep calm of blue heaven dilating 
above. 

And, like passions made still by the 
presence of Love, 

Beneath the clear surface reflecting it 
slide 

Tremulous with soft influence; extending 
its tide 

From the Andes to Atlas, round moun- 
tain and isle, 

Round sea-birds and wrecks, paved with 
heaven's azure smile, 

The wide world of waters is vibrating. 
Where 

Is the ship ? On the verge of the wave 
where it lay 

One tiger is mingled in ghastly affray 

With a sea-snake. The foam and the 

mnrilrp of tViP battle 



Of solid bones crusht by the infinite 

stress 
Of the snake "s adamantine voluminous- 

ness; 
And the hum of the hot blood that spouts 

and rains 
Where the gripe of the tiger has wounded 

the veins. 
Swollen with rage, strength, and effort; 

the whirl and the splash 
As of some hideous engine whose brazen 

teeth smash 
The thin winds and soft waves into 

thunder; the screams 
And hissings crawl fast o'er the smooth 

ocean streams. 
Each sound like a centipede. Near this 

commotion, 
A blue shark is hanging within the blue 

ocean. 
The fin-winged tomb of the victor. The 

other 
Is winning his way from the fate of his 

brother. 
To his own with the speed of despair. 

Lo ! a boat 
Advances; twelve rowers with the im- 
pulse of thought 
Urge on the keen keel, the brine foams. 

At the stern 
Three marksmen stand levelling. Hot 

bullets burn 
In the breast of the tiger, which yet 

bears him on 
To his refuge and ruin. One fragment 

alone, 
'T is dwindling and sinking, 't is now 

almost gone, 
Of the wreck of the vessel peers out of 

the sea. 
With her left hand she grasps it impetu- 
ously, 
With her right she sustains her fair in- 
fant. Death, Fear, 
Love, Beauty, are mixt in the atmos- 
phere; 
Which trembles and burns with the 

fervor of dread 
Around her wild eyes, her bright hand, 

and her head. 



540 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1820. 



Is yet smiling, and playing, and mur- 
muring; so smiled 

The false deep ere the storm. Like a 
sister and brother 

The child and the ocean still smile on 
each other, 

Whilst 

THE CLOUD. 

I BRING fresh showers for the thirsting 
flowers. 
From the seas and the streams; 
I bear light shade for the leaves when 
laid 
In their noonday dreams. 
From my wings are shaken the dews 
that waken 
The sweet buds every one, 
When rockt to rest on their mother's 
breast, 
As she dances about the sun. 
I wield the flail of the lashing hail. 

And whiten the green plains under, 
And then again I dissolve it in rain, 
And laugh as I pass in thunder. 

I sift the snow on the mountains below. 
And their great pines groan aghast; 
And all the night 't is my pillow white. 
While I sleep in the arms of the 
blast. 
Sublime on the towers of my skyey 
bowers. 
Lightning my pilot sits. 
In a cavern under is fettered the thunder. 

It struggles and howls at fits; 
Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion. 

This pilot is guiding me, 
Lured by the love of the genii that move 

In the depths of the purple sea; 
Over the rills, and the crags, and the 
hills. 
Over the lakes and the plains. 
Wherever he dream, under mountain or 
stream. 
The Spirit he loves remains; 
And I all the while bask in heaven's blue 
smile, 
Whilst he is dissolving in rains. 



And his burning plumes outspread. 
Leaps on the back of my sailing rack. 

When the morning star shines dead. 
As on the jag of a mountain crag. 

Which an earthquake rocks and 
swings. 
An eagle alit one moment may sit 

In the light of its golden wings. 
And when sunset may breathe, from the 
lit sea beneath, 

Its ardors of rest and of love, 
And the crimson pall of eve may fall 

From the depths of heaven above. 
With wings folded I rest, on mine airy 
nest. 

As still as a brooding dove. 

That orbed maiden with white fire laden, 

Whom mortals call the moon, 
Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like 
floor, 
By the midnight breezes strewn; 
And wherever the beat of her unseen 
feet. 
Which only the angels hear, 
May have broken the woof of my tent's 
thin roof. 
The stars peep behind her and peer; 
And I laugh to see them whirl and flee. 

Like a swarm of golden bees. 
When I widen the rent in my wind-built 
tent. 
Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas, 
Like strips of the sky fallen thro' me 
on high. 
Are each paved with the moon and 
these. 

I bind the sun's throne with a burning 
zone. 
And the moon's with a girdle of 
pearl; 
The volcanoes are dim, and the stars 
reel and swim. 
When the whirlwinds my banner un- 
furl. 
From cape to cape with a bridge-like 
shape. 
Over a torrent sea. 
Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof, 
The mountains its columns be. 



' ^**^^*^^W^,* ♦'^H**%***!*?^^ 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1820. 



W 



With hurricane, fire, and snow, 
When the powers of the air are chained 
to my chair. 
Is the million-colored bow; 
The sphere-fire above its soft colors 
wove, 
While the moist earth was laughing 
below. 

I am the daughter of earth and water, 

And the nursling of the sky; 
I pass thro' the pores of the ocean 
and shores; 
I change, but I cannot die. 
For after the rain when with never a 
stain. 
The pavilion of heaven is bare, 
And the winds and sunbeams with their 
convex gleams. 
Build up the blue dome of air, 
I silently laugh at my own cenotaph. 
And out of the caverns of rain, 
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost 
from the tomb, 
I arise and unbuild it again. 



TO A SKYLARK. 

Hail to thee, blithe spirit ! 

Bird thou never wert. 
That from heaven, or near it, 

Pourest thy full heart 
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. 

Higher still and higher 

From the earth thou springest 
Like a cloud of fire; 

The blue deep thou wingest, 
And singing still dost soar, and soaring 
ever singest. 

In the golden lightning 

Of the sunken sun, 
O'er which clouds are brightning, 
Thou dost float and run; 
Like an unbodied joy whose race is 
just begun. 

The pale purple even 

Melts around thy flight; 
Like a star of heaven, 



Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy 
shrill delight. 

Keen as are the arrows 
Of that silver sphere, 
Whose intense lamp narrows 
In the white dawn clear. 
Until we hardly see," — we feel that it 
is there. 

All the earth and air 

With thy voice is loud, 
As, when night is bare. 
From one lonely cloud 
The moon rains out her beams, and 
heaven is overflowed. 

What thou art we know not; 

What is most like thee ? 
From rainbow clouds there flow not 
Drops so bright to see. 
As from thy presence showers a rain of 
melody. 

Like a poet hidden 

In the light of thought, 
Singing hymns unbidden. 
Till the world is wrought 
To sympathy with hopes and fears it 
heeded not; 

Like a high-born maiden 

In a palace-tower. 
Soothing her love-laden 
Soul in secret hour 
With music sweet as love, which over- 
flows her bower: 

Like a glow-worm golden 

In a dell of dew, 
Scattering unbeholden 
Its aerial hue 
Among the flowers and grass, which 
screen it from the view: 

Like a rose embowered 
In its own green leaves. 

By warm winds deflowered, 
Till the scent it gives 
Makes faint with too much sweet these 



542 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1820. 



Sound of vernal showers 
On the twinkhng grass, 
Rain-awakened flowers, 
All that ever was 
Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music 
doth surpass : 

Teach us, sprite or bird, 

What sweet thoughts are thine : 
I have never heard 
Praise of love or wine 
That panted forth a flood of rapture so 
divine- 
Chorus Hymeneal, 

Or triumphal chant, 
Matched with thine would be all 
But an empty vaunt, 
A thing wherein we feel there is some 
hidden want. 

What object are the fountains 

Of thy happy strain? 
What fields, or waves, or moun- 
tains? 
What shapes of sky or plain? 
What love of thine own kind? what 
ignorance of pain? 

With thy clear keen joyance 

Languor cannot be : 
Shadow of annoyance 
Never came near thee: 
Thou lovest : but ne'er knew love's 
sad satiety. 

Waking or asleep. 

Thou of death must deem 
Things more true and deep 
Than we mortals dream. 
Or how could thy notes flow in such a 
crystal stream? 

We look before and after. 

And pine for what is not : 
Our sincerest laughter 

With some pain is fraught; 
Our sweetest songs are those that tell 
of saddest thought. 

Yet if we could scorn 

Hate, and pride, and fear; 
If we were things born 
Not to shed a tear, 
I know not how thv iov we ever should 



Better than all measures 

Of delightful sound, 
Better than all treasures 
That in books are found, 
Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of 
the ground ! 

Teach me half the gladness 

That thy brain must know, 
Such harmonious madness 
From my lips would flow. 
The world should listen then, as I am 
listening now. 



ODE TO LIBERTY. 

Yet, Freedom, yet thy banner torn but flying, 
Streams like a tliunder storm against the wind. 

BVRON. 

I. 

A GLORIOUS people vibrated again 

The lightning of the nations: Liberty 
From heart to heart, from tower to tower, 
o'er Spain, 
Scattering contagious fire into the sky. 
Gleamed. My soul spurned the chains 
of its dismay. 
And, in the rapid plumes of song, 
Clothed itself, sublime and strong; 
As a young eagle soars the morning 
clouds among, 
Hovering in verse o'er its accustomed 
prey; 
Till from its station in the heaven of 
fame 
The Spirit's whirlwind rapt it, and 
the ray 
Of the remotest sphere of living 
flame 
Which pavQs the void was from behind 
it flung, 
As foam from a ship's swiftness, when 

there came ; 

A voice out of the deep : I will record 
the same. 



II. 



The Sun and the serenest Moon sprang 
forth : 
The burninp- stars of the abyss were 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1820. 



543 



Into the depths of heaven. The dcedal 
earth, 
That island in the ocean of the world, 
Hung in its cloud of all-sustaining air: 
But this divinest universe 
Was yet a chaos and a curse. 
For thou wert not; but power from worst 
producing worse, 
The spirit of the beasts was kindled 
there, 
And of the birds, and of the watery 
forms, 
And there was war among them, and 
despair 
Within them, raging without truce 
or terms; 
The bosom of their violated nurse 

Groaned, for beasts warred on beasts, 

and worms on worms, 
And men on men; each heart was as 
a hell of storms. 

III. 

Man, the imperial shape, then multiplied 

His generations under the pavilion 
Of the sun's throne : palace and pyramid. 
Temple and prison, to many a swarm- 
ing million. 
Were, as to mountain-wolves their ragged 
caves. 
This human living multitude 
Was savage, cunning, blind, and 
rude, 
For thou wert not; but o'er the popu- 
lous solitude. 
Like one fierce cloud over a waste of 
waves 
Hung Tyranny; beneath, sate dei- 
fied 
The sister-pest, congregator of slaves; 
Into the shadow of her pinions wide 
Anarchs and priests who fled on gold 
and blood. 
Till with the stain their inmost souls 

are dyed, 
Drove the astonished herds of men 
from every side. 

IV. 

The nodding promontories, and blue 
isles. 
And cloud-like mountains, and dividu- 



Of Greece, baskt glorious in the open 
smiles 
Of favoring heaven : from their en- 
chanted caves 
Prophetic echoes flung dim melody. 
On the unapprehensive wild 
The vine, the corn, the olive mild, 
Grew savage yet, to human use unrecon- 
ciled; 
And, like unfolded flowers beneath 
the sea, 
Like the man's thought dark in the 
infant's brain, 
Like aught that is which wraps what 
is to be. 
Art's deathless dreams lay veiled by 
many a vein 
Of Parian stone; and yet a speechless 
child. 
Verse murmured, and Philosophy did 

strain 
Her lidless eyes for thee; when o'er 
the iEgean main 

V. 

Athens arose : a city such as vision 

Builds from the purple crags and sil- 
ver towers 
Of battlemented cloud, as in derision 

Of kingliest masonry: the ocean-floors 
Pave it; the evening sky pavilions it; 
Its portals are inhabited 
By thunder-zoned winds, each 
head 
Within its cloudy wings with sunfire gar- 
landed, 
A divine work ! Athens diviner yet 
Gleamed with its crest of columns, 
on the will 
Of man, as on a mount of diamond, 
set; 
For thou wert, and thine all-creative 
skill 
Peopled with forms that mock the eter- 
nal dead 
In marble immortality, that hill 
Which was thine earliest throne and 
latest oracle. 



VI. 



Within the surface of Time's fleeting 



544 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1820. 



Its wrinkled image lies, as then it lay 
Immovably unquiet, and for ever 

It trembles, but it cannot pass away ! 
The voices of thy bards and sages thunder 
With an earth-awakening blast 
Thro' the caverns of the past; 
Religion veils her eyes: Oppression 
shrinks aghast : 
A winged sound of joy, and love, and 
wonder, 
Which soars where Expectation 
never flew. 
Rending the veil of space and time 
asunder ! 
One ocean feeds the clouds, and 
streams, and dew; 
One sun illumines heaven; one spirit 
vast 
With life and love makes chaos ever 

new, 
As Athens doth the world with thy 
delight renew. 



VII. 

Then Rome was, and from thy deep 
bosom fairest. 
Like a wolf-cub from a Cadmaean 
Maenad,! 
She drew the milk of greatness, tho' thy 
dearest 
From that Elysian food was yet un- 
weaned; 
And many a deed of terrible uprightness 
By thy sweet love was sanctified; 
And in thy smile, and by thy side. 
Saintly Camillus lived, and firm Atilius 
died. 
But when tears stained thy robe of 
vestal whiteness, 
And gold profaned thy Capitolian 
throne, 
Thou didst desert, with spirit-winged 
lightness. 
The senate of the tyrants: they sunk 
prone 
Slaves of one tyrant : Palatinus sighed 
Faint echoes of Ionian song; that tone 
Thou didst delay to hear, lamenting to 
disown. 



VIII. 

From what Hyrcanian glen or frozen 
hill, 
Or piny promontory of the Arctic 
main. 
Or utmost islet inaccessible, 

Didst thou lament the ruin of thy 
reign. 
Teaching the woods and waves, and des- 
ert rocks, 
And every Naiad's ice-cold urn, 
To talk in echoes sad and stern. 
Of that sublimest lore which man had 
dared unlearn? 
For neither didst thou watch the wiz- 
ard flocks 
Of the Scald's dreams, nor haunt 
the Druid's sleep. 
What if the tears rained thro' thy 
shattered locks 
Were quickly dried? for thou didst 
groan, not weep 
When from its sea of death to kill and 
burn. 
The Galilean serpent forth did creep, 
And made thy world an undistinguish- 
able heap. 

IX. 

A thousand years the Earth cried, Where 
art thou? 
And then the shadow of thy coming 
fell 
On Saxon Alfred's olive-cinctured brow: 

And many a warrior-peopled citadel, 
Like rocks which fire lifts out of the flat 
deep. 
Arose in sacred Italy, 
Frowning o'er the tempestuous 
sea 
Of kings, and priests, and slaves, in 
tower-crowned majesty; 
That multitudinous anarchy did sweep, 
And burst around their walls, like 
idle foam, 
Whilst from the human spirit's deepest 
deep 
Strange melody with love and awe 
struck dumb 
Dissonant arms; and Art, which cannot 



ifiWa^H^TttiH^iMHiMi^ 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1820. 



545 



With divine wand traced on our 
earthly home 

Fit imagery to pave heaven's everlast- 
ing dome. 

X. 

Thou huntress swifter than the Moon ! 
thou terror 
Of the world's wolves ! thou bearer 
of the quiver, 
V/hose sunlike shafts pierce tempest- 
winged Error, 
As light may pierce the clouds when 
they dissever 
In the calm regions of the orient day ! 

Luther caught thy wakening 

glance; 
Like lightning, from his leaden 
lance 
Reflected, it dissolved the visions of the 
trance 
In which, as in a tomb, the nations 
lay; 
And England's prophets hailed thee 
as their queen. 
In songs whose music cannot pass 
away, 
Tho' it must flow for ever: not 
unseen 
Before the spirit-sighted countenance 
Of Milton didst thou pass, from the 

sad scene 
Beyond whose night he saw, with a 
dejected mien. 

XI. 

The eager hours and unreluctant years 
As on a dawn-illumined mountain 
stood, 
Trampling to silence their loud hopes and 
fears. 
Darkening each other with their mul- 
titude. 
And cried aloud. Liberty ! Indignation 
Answered Pity from her cave; 
Death grew pale within the grave, 
And Desolation howled to the destroyer, 
Save ! 
When like heaven's sun girt by the 
exhalation 
Of its own glorious light, thou didst 



Chasing thy foes from nation unto 
nation 
Like shadows : as if day had cloven 
the skies 
At dreaming midnight o'er the western 
wave, 

Men started, staggering with a glad 
surprise. 

Under the lightnings of thine unfamil- 
iar eyes. 

XII. 

Thou heaven of earth ! what spells could 
pall thee then, 
In ominous eclipse? a thousand years 
Bred from the slime of deep oppression's 
den. 
Dyed all thy liquid light with blood 
and tears. 
Till thy sweet stars could weep the stain 
away; 
How like Bacchanals of blood 
Round France, the ghastly vint- 
age, stood 
Destruction's sceptred slaves, and Folly's 
mitred brood ! 
When one, like them, but mightier far 
than they. 
The Anarch of thine own bewildered 
powers 
Rose : armies mingled in obscure array, 
Like clouds with clouds, darkening 
the sacred bowers 
Of serene heaven. He, by the past pur- 
sued. 
Rests with those dead, but unforgotten 

hours. 
Whose ghosts scare victor kings in 
their ancestral towers. 

XIII. 

England yet sleeps : was she not called 
of old? 
Spain calls her now, as with its thrill- 
ing thunder 

Vesuvius wakens ^tna, and the cold 
Snow-crags by its reply are cloven in 
sunder : 

O'er the lit waves every ^olian isle 
From Pithecusa to Pelorus 
Howls, and leaps, and glares in 



546 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1820. 



They cry, Be dim; ye lamps of heaven 
suspended o'er us. 
Her chains are threads of gold, she 
need but smile 
And they dissolve; but Spain's were 
links of steel. 
Till bit to dust by virtue's keenest file. 
Twins of a single destiny ! appeal 
To the eternal years enthroned before us, 
In the dim West; impress us from a 

seal. 
All ye have thought and done ! Time 
cannot dare conceal. 

XIV. 

Tomb of Arminius ! render up thy dead, 
Till, like a standard from a watch- 
tower's staff. 
His soul may stream over the tyrant's 
head; 
Thy victory shall be his epitaph, 
Wild Bacchanal of truth's mysterious 
wine. 
King-deluded Germany, 
His dead spirit lives in thee. 
Why do we fear or hope ? thou art already 
free ! 
And thou, lost Paradise of this divine 
And glorious world ! thou flowery 

wilderness ! 
Thou island of eternity ! thou shrine 
Where desolation clothed with 
loveliness. 
Worships the thing thou wert ! O Italy, 
Gather thy blood into thy heart; re- 
press 
The beasts who make their dens thy 
sacred palaces. 

XV. 

Oh, that the free would stamp the im- 
pious name 
Of King into the dust ! or write it 
there, 

So that this blot upon the page of fame 
Were as a serpent's path, which the 
light air 

Erases, and the flat sands close behind ! 
Ye the oracle have heard : 
Lift the victory-flashing sword, 



Which, weak itself as stubble, yet can 
bind 
Into a mass, irrefragably firm, 
The axes and the rods which awe man- 
kind; 
The sound has poison in it, 't is the 
sperm 
Of what makes life foul, cankerous, and 
abhorred : 
Disdain not thou, at thine appointed 

term, 
To set thine armed heel on this reluc- 
tant worm. 

XVI. 

Oh, that the wise from their bright minds 
would kindle 
Such lamps within the dome of this 
dim world, 
That the pale name of Priest might 
shrink and dwindle 
Into the hell from which it first was 
hurled, 
A scoff of impious pride from fiends 
impure; 
Till human thoughts might kneel 

alone 
Each before the judgment-throne 
Of its own aweless soul, or of the power 
unknown ! 
Oh, that the words which make the 
thoughts obscure 
From which they spring, as clouds 
of glimmering dew 
From a white lake blot heaven's blue 
portraiture, 
Were stript of their thin masks and 
various hue 
And frowns and smiles and splendors not 
their own. 
Till in the nakedness of false and true 
They stand before their Lord, each to 
receive its due ! 

XVII. 

He who taught man to vanquish whatso- 
ever 
Can be between the cradle and the 
grave 

Pro^A/nt^rl Viim tVip Kina nf Tjfp. Oh. 



Atit^timi^riMm\t^^vttim>aJ»kg^ 



iass^ 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1820. 



547 



If on his own high will a willing slave, 
He has enthroned the oppression and 
the oppressor. 
What if earth can clothe and feed 
Amplest millions at their need, 
And power in thought be as the tree 
within the seed? 
Or what if Art, an ardent intercessor, 
Driving on fiery wings to Nature's 
throne. 
Checks the great mother stooping to 
caress her, 
And cries: Give me, thy child, do- 
minion 
Over all height and depth? if Life can 
breed 
New wants, and wealth from those 

who toil and groan 
Rend of thy gifts and hers a thou- 
sandfold for one. 

XVIII. 

Come Thou, but lead out of the inmost 
cave 
Of man's deep spirit, as the morning- 
star 
Beckons the Sun from the Eoan wave, 
Wisdom. I hear the pennons of her 
car 
Self-moving, like cloud charioted by 
flame ; 
Comes she not, and come ye not. 
Rulers of eternal thought, 
To judge, with solemn truth, life's ill- 
apportioned lot? 
Blind Love, and equal Justice, and 
the Fame 
Of what has been, the Hope of 

what will be? 
Oh Liberty ! if such could be thy name 
Wert thou disjoined from these, or 
they from thee : 
If thine or theirs were treasures to be 
bought 
By blood or tears, have not the wise 

and free 
Wept tears, and blood like tears? — The 
solemn harmony 

XIX. 

Paused, and the spirit of that mighty 



To its abyss was suddenly withdrawn; 
Then, as a wild swan, when sublimely 
winging 
Its path athwart the thunder-smoke 
of dawn, 
Sinks headlong thro' the aerial golden 
light 
On the heavy sounding plain. 
When the bolt has pierced its 
brain; 
As summer clouds dissolve, unburdened 
of their rain; 
As a far taper fades with fading night. 
As a brief insect dies with dying 
day. 
My song, its pinions disarrayed of 
might, 
Droopt; o'er it closed the echoes 
far away 
Of the great voice which did its flight 
sustain. 
As waves which lately paved his watery 

way 
Hiss round a drowner's head in their 
tempestuous play. 



CANCELLED PASSAGE OF THE 
ODE TO LIBERTY. 

Within a cavern of man's trackless 
spirit 
Is throned an Image, so intensely fair 
That the adventurous thoughts that wan- 
der near it 
Worship, and as they kneel tremble 
and wear 
The splendor of its presence, and the 
light 
Penetrates their dreamlike frame 
Till they become charged with the 
strength of flame. 



TO 



I FEAR thy kisses, gentle maiden, 

Thou needest not fear mine; 
My spirit is too deeply laden 



548 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1820. 



II. 



I fear thy mien, thy tones, thy motion. 

Thou needest not fear mine; 
Innocent is the heart's devotion 

With which I worship thine. 



ARETHUSA. 



Arethusa arose 

From her couch of snows 

In the Acroceraunian mountains, — 
From cloud and from crag, 
With many a jag. 

Shepherding her bright fountains. 
She leapt down the rocks, 
With her rainbow locks 

Streaming among the streams; — 
Her steps paved with green 
The downward ravine 

Which slopes to the western gleams ; 
And gliding and springing 
She went, ever singing, 

In murmurs as soft as sleep; 

The earth seemed to love her, 
And Heaven smiled above her, 

As she lingered towards the deep. 



Then Alpheus bold. 

On his glacier cold. 
With his trident the mountains strook 

And opened a chasm 

In the rocks; — with the spasm 
All Erymanthus shook. 

And the black south wind 

It concealed behind 
The urns of the silent snow. 

And earthquake and thunder 

Did rend in sunder 
The bars of the springs below 

The beard and the hair 

Of the River-god were 
Seen thro' the torrent's sweep, 

As he followed the light 

Of the fleet nymph's flight 
To the brink of the Dorian deep. 

III. 



For he grasps me now by the hair ! " 

The loud Ocean heard. 

To its blue depth stirred, 
And divided at her prayer; 

And under the water 

The Earth's white daughter 
Fled like a sunny beam; 

Behind her descended 

Her billows, unblended 
With the brackish Dorian stream:— 

Like a gloomy stain 

On the emerald main 
Alpheus rushed behind, — 

As an eagle pursuing 

A dove to its ruin 
Down the streams of the cloudy wind. 

IV. 

Under the bowers 

Where the Ocean Powers 
Sit on their pearled thrones, 

Thro' the coral woods 

Of the weltering floods, 
Over heaps of unvalued stones; 

Thro' the dim beams 

Which amid the streams 
Weave a network of colored light; 

And under the caves. 

Where the shadowy waves 
Are as green as the forest's night:— 

Outspeeding the shark, 

And the sword-fish dark, 
Under the ocean foam. 

And up thro' the rifts 

Of the mountain clifts 
They past to their Dorian home. 

V. 

And now from their fountains 

In Enna's mountains, 
Down one vale where the morning basks 

Like friends once parted 

Grown single-hearted. 
They ply their watery tasks. 

At sunrise they leap 

From their cradles steep 
In the cave of the shelving hill; 

At noontide they flow 
Through the woods below 
And the meadows of asphodel; 



4M^W*h^«<V...^.-... 



■;r»t»^***'»*|»*^,'^»H^f*j,'t;-^';- »;- «■: p 'f.:*^i?*lff(^.*tr j i 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1820. 



549 



Beneath the Ortygian shore; — 

Like spirits that lie 

In the azure sky 
When they love but live no more. 



SONG OF PROSERPINE, 

WHILE GATHERING FLOWERS ON THE 
PLAIN OF ENNA. 



Sacred Goddess, Mother Earth, 
Thou from whose immortal bosom, 

Gods, and men, and beasts have birth. 
Leaf and blade, and bud and blossom, 

Breathe thine influence most divine 

On thine own child, Proserpine. 

II. 

If with mists of evening dew 

Thou dost nourish these young flowers 
Till they grow, in scent and hue. 

Fairest children of the hours, 
Breathe thine influence most divine 
On thine own child, Proserpine. 



HYMN OF APOLLO. 



The sleepless Hours who watch me as I 

lie, 
Curtained with star-inwoven tapestries. 
From the broad moonlight of the sky, 
Fanning the busy dreams from my dim 

eyes, — 
Waken me when their Mother, the gray 

Dawn, 
Tells them that dreams and that the 

moon is gone. 

II. 

Then I arise, and climbing Heaven's 
blue dome, 
I walk over the mountains and the 
waves, 



My footsteps pave the clouds with fire; 

the caves 
Are filled with my bright presence, ana 

the air 
Leaves the green earth to my embraces 

bare. 

III. 

The sunbeams are my shafts, with which 
I kill 
Deceit, that loves the night and fears 
the day; 
All men who do or even imagine ill 

Fly me, and from the glory of my ray 
Good minds and open actions take new 

might, 
Until diminish! by the reign of night. 



IV. 



I feed the clouds, the rainbows and the 

flowers 
With their ethereal colors; the Moon's 

globe 
And the pure stars in their eternal bowers 
Are cinctured with my power as with 

a robe; 
Whatever lamps on Earth or Heaven 

may shine, 
Are portions of one power, which is 

mine. 

V. 

I stand at noon upon the peak of 

Heaven, 
Then with unwilling steps I wander 

down 
Into the clouds of the Atlantic even; 
For grief that I depart they weep and 

frown : 
What look is more delightful than the 

smile 
With which I soothe them from the 

western isle? 



VI. 

I am the eye with which the Universe 

Beholds itself and knows itself divine; 
All harmony of instrument or verse. 



550 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1820. 



All light of art or nature; — to my song, 
Victory and praise in their own right 
belong. 



HYMN OF PAN. 



From the forests and highlands 

We come, we come; 
From the river-girt islands. 

Where loud waves are dumb 
Listening to my sweet pipings. 
The wind in the reeds and the rushes, 

The bees on the bells of thyme. 
The birds on the myrtle bushes, 
The cicala above in the lime, 
And the lizards below in the grass, 
Were as silent as ever old Tmolus was 
Listening to my sweet pipings. 

II. 

Liquid Peneus was flowing. 

And all dark Tempe lay 
In Pelion's shadow, outgrowing 
The light of the dying day, 
Speeded by my sweet pipings. 
The Sileni, and Sylvans, and Fauns, 
And the Nymphs of the woods and 
waves. 
To the edge of the moist river-lawns. 
And the brink of the dewy caves, 
And all that did then attend and follow 
Were silent with love, as you now, 
Apollo, 
With envy of my sweet pipings. 

III. 

I sang of the dancing stars, 

I sang of the daedal Earth, 
And of Heaven_ — and the giant wars. 
And Love, and Death, and Birth, — 
And then I changed my pipings, — 
Singing how down the vale of Menalus 
I pursued a maiden and claspt a 
reed: 
Gods and men, we are all deluded thus ! 
It breaks in our bosom and then we 
bleed : 
All wept, as I think both ye now would, 



THE QUESTION. 



I DREAMED that, as I wandered by the 
way, 
Bare winter suddenly was changed to 
spring, 
And gentle odors led my steps astray, 
Mixt with a sound of waters mur- 
muring 
Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay 
Under a copse, and hardly dared to 

fling 
Its green arms round the bosom of the 

stream, 
But kist it and then fled, as thou 

mightest in dream. 



II. 



There grew pied wind-flowers and violets. 
Daisies, those pearled Arcturi of the 
earth. 
The constellated flower that never sets; 
Faint oxslips; tender bluebells, at I 
whose birth 
The sod scarce heaved; and that tall 
flower that wets — 
Like a child, half in tenderness and 
mirth — 
Its mother's face with heaven's collected 

tears, 
When the low wind, its playmate's voice, 
it hears. 



III. 



And in the warm hedge grew lush 
eglantine, 
Green cowbind and the moonlight- 
colored May, 
And cherry-blossoms, and white cups, 
whose wine 
Was the bright dew, yet drained not 
by the day ; 
And wild roses, and ivy serpentine. 
With its dark buds and leaves, wan- 
dering astray; 
And flowers azure, black, and streakt 



,tU^iU4tik%«««< 



. M#««IM«^«M«%tf«l^^^««f 4^i^^ 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1820. 



551 



IV. 



^nd nearer to the river's trembling edge 
There grew broad flag-flowers, purple 
prankt with white, 
^nd starry river buds among the sedge, 
And floating water-lilies, broad and 
bright, 
A/^hich lit the oak that overhung the 
hedge 
With moonlight beams of their own 
watery light; 
^nd bulrushes, and reeds of such deep 

green 
^s soothed the dazzled eye with sober 
sheen. 



klethought that of these visionary flowers 
I made a nosegay bound in such a way 
rhat the same hues, which in their 
natural bowers 
Were mingled or opposed, the like 
array 
Cept these imprisoned children of the 
Hours 
Within my hand, — and then, elate 

and gay, 
hastened to the spot whence I had 
come, 
"hat I might there present it ! — oh ! to 
whom? 



THE TWO SPIRITS: AN 
ALLEGORY. 

First Spirit. 

) THOU, who plumed with strong desire 
Wouldst float above the earth, bewave ! 
V Shadow tracks thy flight of fire — 
Night is coming ! 
Bright are the regions of the air, 
^.nd among the winds and beams 
It were delight to wander there — 
Night is coming ! 

Second Spirit. 
rhe deathless stars are bright above, 



Within my heart is the lamp of love. 
And that is day ! 
And the moon will smile with gentle 
light 
On my golden plumes where'er they 
move; 
The meteors will linger round my 
flight, 

And make night day. 

First Spirit. 

But if the whirlwinds of darkness waken 
Hail, and lightning, and stormy rain; 
See, the bounds of the air are shaken — 
Night is coming ! 
The red swift clouds of the hurricane 
Yon declining sun have overtaken, 
The clash of the hail sweeps over the 
plain — 

Night is coming ! 

Second Spirit. 

I see the light, and I hear the sound; 
I '11 sail on the flood of the tempest 
dark, 
With the calm within and the light 
around 

Which makes night day: 
And thou, when the gloom is deep and 
stark. 
Look from thy dull earth, slumber- 
bound. 
My moon-like flight thou then may'st 
mark 

On high, far away. 



Tf T 



ilrl 



:c tViA clicirli^ of nirrVif 



Some say there is a precipice 

Where one vast pine is frozen to ruin 
O'er piles of snow and chasms of ice 
Mid Alpine mountains; 
And that the languid storm pursuing 
That winged shape, for ever flies 

Round those hoar branches, aye re- 
newing 

Its aery fountains. 

Some say when nights are dry and clear. 
And the death-dews sleep on the mo- 
rass, 
Sweet whispers are heard by the traveller, 
Whirh make nip'ht dav: 



552 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1820. 



And a silver shape like his early love 
doth pass 
Upborne by her wild and glittering hair, 
And when he awakes on the fragrant 
grass, 

He finds night day. 



ODE TO NAPLES.' 

EPODE I a. 

I STOOD within the city disinterred, 
And heard the autumnal leaves like 
light footfalls 
Of spirits passing thro' the streets; and 
heard 
The Mountain's slumberous voice at 
intervals 
Thrill thro' those roofless halls; 
The oracular thunder penetrating shook 
The listening soul in my suspended 
blood; 
I felt that Earth out of her deep heart 
spoke — 
I felt, but heard not : — thro' white 
columns glowed 
The isle-sustaining Ocean-flood, 
\ plane of light between two Heavens 
of azure : 
Around me gleamed many a bright 
sepulchre 
Of whose pure beauty, Time, as if his 

pleasure 
Were to spare Death, had never made 
erasure; 
But every living lineament was clear 
As in the sculptor's thought; and there 
The wreaths of stony myrtle, ivy, and 
pine, 
Like winter leaves o'ergrown by 

moulded snow, 
Seemed only not to move and grow 
Because the crystal silence of the air 

^ The Author has connected many recollections 
of his visit to Pompeii and Baias with the enthu- 
siasm excited by the intelligence of the procla- 
mation of a Constitutional Government at Na- 
ples This lias given a tinge of picturesque and 
descriptive imagery to the introductory Epodes 
which depicture these scenes, and some of the 
majestic feelings permanently connected with the 
scene of this animating event. 



Weighed on their life; even as the 

Power divine 
Which then lulled all things, brooded 

upon mine. 

EPODE II a. 

Then gentle winds arose 
With many a mingled close 
Of wild ^olian sound and mountain- 
odor keen; 
And where the Baian ocean 
Welters with airlike motion. 
Within, above, around its bowers of 
starry green. 
Moving the sea-flowers in those purple 
caves 
Even as the ever-stormless atmos- 
phere 
Floats o'er the Elysian realm, 
It bore me like an Angel, o'er the 
waves 
Of sunlight, whose swift pinnace of 
dewy air 
No storm can overwhelm; 
I sailed, where ever flows 
Under the calm Serene 
A spirit of deep emotion 
From the unknown graves 
Of the dead kings of Melody. ^ 
Shadowy Aornos darkened o'er the helm 
The horizontal ether; heaven stript bare 
Its depths over Elysium, where the prow 
Made the invisible water white as snow; 
From that Typhaean mount, Inarime 
There streamed a sunlit vapor, like 
the standard 
Of some ethereal host; 
Whilst from all the coast. 
Louder and louder, gathering round, 
there wandered 
Over the oracular woods and divine sea 
Prophesyings which grew articulate — 
They seize me — I must speak them — 
be they fate ! 

STROPHE a I. 

Naples ! thou Heart of men which ever 
pantest 
Naked, beneath the lidless eye of 
heaven ! 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1820. 



553 



Elysian City which to calm enchantest 
The mutinous air and sea : they round 
thee, even 
As sleep round Love, are driven ! 
Metropolis of a ruined Paradise 

Long lost, late won, and yet but half 
regained ! 
Bright Altar of the bloodless sacrifice, 
Which armed Victory offers up un- 
stained 
To Love, the flower-enchained ! 
Thou which wert once, and then didst 

cease to be. 
Now art, and henceforth ever shalt be, 
free, 
If Hope, and Truth, and Justice can 
avail, 

Hail, hail, all hail ! 

STROPHE ^ 2. 

Thou youngest giant birth 

Which from the groaning earth 
Leap'st, clothed in armor of impene- 
trable scale ! 

Last of the Intercessors ! 

Who 'gainst the Crowned Trans- 
gressors 
Pleadest before God's love ! Arrayed 
in Wisdom's mail. 

Wave thy lightning lance in mirth 

Nor let thy high heart fail, 
Tho' from their hundred gates the 
leagued Oppressors, 

With hurried legions move ! 

Hail, hail, all hail ! 



ANTISTROPHE a. 

What tho' Cimmerian Anarchs dare 
blaspheme 
Freedom and thee? thy shield is as a 
mirror 
To make their blind slaves see, and with 
fierce gleam 
To turn his hungry sword upon the 
wearer; 
A new Actseon's error 
Shall theirs have been — devoured by 
their own hounds. 
Be thou like the imperial Basilisk 



Gaze on oppression, till at that dread 
risk 

Aghast she pass from the Earth's disk: 
Fear not, but gaze — for freemen might- 
ier grow. 
And slaves more feeble, gazing on their 
foe; 

If Hope and Truth and Justice may 
avail. 

Thou shalt be great. — All hail ! 

ANTISTROPHE |5 2. 

From Freedom's form divine. 
From Nature's inmost shrine. 
Strip every impious gawd, rend Error 
veil by veil : 
O'er Ruin desolate, 
O'er Falsehood's fallen state. 
Sit thou sublime, unawed; be the De- 
stroyer pale ! 
And equal laws be thine. 
And winged words let sail, 
Freighted with truth even from the 
throne of God: 
That wealth, surviving fate, 
Be thine. — All hail ! 

ANTISTROPHE a y. 

Didst thou not start to hear Spain's 
thrilling paean 
From land to land re-echoed solemnly, 
Till silence became music? From the 
-(Flaeani 
To the cold Alps, eternal Italy 
Starts to hear thine ! The Sea 
Which paves the desert streets of Venice 
laughs 
In light and music; widowed Genoa 
wan 
By moonlight spells ancestral epitaphs. 
Murmuring, where is Doria? fair 
Milan, 
W^ithin whose veins long ran 
The viper's ^ palsying venom, lifts her 

heel 
To bruise his head. The signal and the 
seal 



^ ^aea, the island of Circe. 

2 The viper was the armorial device of the 

Vicrnnti tvrante nf ]Vfilan 



554 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1820. 



(If Hope and Truth and Justice can 

avail) 
Art thou of all these hopes. — O hail ! 



ANTISTROPHE ^ y. 

Florence ! beneath the sun, 
Of cities fairest one, 
Blushes within her bower for Freedom's 
expectation: 
From eyes of quenchless hope 
Rome tears the priestly cope. 
As ruling once by power, so now by 
admiration. 
As athlete stript to run 
Firom a remoter station 
For the high prize lost on Philippi's 
shore: — 
As then Hope, Truth, and Justice did 

avail, 
So now may Fraud and Wrong ! O 
hail ! 

EPODE I. (i. 

Hear ye the march as of the Earth-born 
Forms 
Arrayed against the ever-living Gods? 
The crash and darkness of a thousand 
storms 
Bursting their inaccessible abodes 
Of crags and thunder-clouds? 
See ye the banners blazoned to the 
day, 
Inwrought with emblems of barbaric 
pride? 
Dissonant threats kills Silence far away. 
The serene Heaven which wraps our 
Eden wide 
With iron light is dyed. 
The Anarchs of the North lead forth 
their legions 
Like Chaos o'er creation, uncreat- 
ing; 
A hundred tribes nourisht on strange 

religions 
And lawless slaveries, — down the aerial 
regions 
Of the white Alps, desolating, 
Famisht wolves that bide no 
waiting, 
Blotting the glowing footsteps of old 



Trampling our columned cities into dust, 
Their dull and savage lust 
On Beauty's corse to sickness sati- 
ating — 
They come ! The fields they tread look 

black and hoary 
With fire — from their red feet the 
streams run gory ! 



EPODE II. I*. 

Great Spirit, deepest Love ! 
Which rulest and dost move 
All things which live and are, within 
the Italian shore; 
Who spreadest heaven around it, 
Whose woods, rocks, waves, sur- 
round it; 
Who sittest in thy star, o'er Ocean's 

western fioor. 
Spirit of beauty ! at whose soft command 
The sunbeams and the showers distil 
its foison 
From the Earth's bosom chill; 
O bid those beams be each a blinding 
brand 
Of lightning ! bid those showers be 
dews of poison ! 
Bid the Earth's plenty kill ! 
Bid thy bright Heaven above. 
Whilst light and darkness bound it. 
Be their tomb who planned 
To make it ours and thine ! 
Or, with thine harmonizing ardors fill 
And raise thy sons, as o'er the prone 

horizon 
Thy lamp feeds every twilight wave with 

fire — 
Be man's high hope and unextinct de- 
sire, 
The instrument to work thy will divine ! 
Then clouds from sunbeams, antelopes 
from leopards. 
And frowns and fears from Thee, 
Would not more swiftly flee 
Than Oltic wolves from the Ausonian 
shepherds. — 
Whatever, Spirit, from thy starry shrine 
Thou yieldest or withholdest. Oh, let 
be 



^ ****^*^^»^!^!<!?W**fW*t*f^f?l?l^ 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1820. 



555 



AUTUMN: A DIRGE. 



The warm sun is failing, the bleak wind 

is wailing, 
The bare boughs are sighing, the pale 
flowers are dying, 
And the year 
On the earth her deathbed, in a shroud 
of leaves dead, 
Is lying. 
Come, months, come away, 
From November to May, 
In your saddest array; 
Follow the bier 
Of the dead cold year. 
And like dim shadows watch by her 
sepulchre. 

II. 

The chill rain is falling, the nipt worm 

is crawling, 
The rivers are swelling, the thunder is 
knelling 

For the year; 
The blithe swallows are flown, and the 
lizards each gone 

To his dwelling; 
Come, months, come away. 
Put on white, black, and gray; 
Let your light sisters play — 
Ye, follow the bier 
Of the dead cold year, 
And make her grave green with tear on 
tear. 

THE WANING MOON. 

And like a dying lady, lean and pale. 
Who totters forth, wrapt in a gauzy veil. 
Out of her chamber, led by the insane 
And feeble wanderings of her fading brain. 
The moon rose up in the murky east, 
A white and shapeless mass. 

TO THE MOON. 

I. 

Art thou pale for weariness 
Of climbing heaven and gazing on the 
earth, 
Wandering companionless 



And ever changing, like a joyless eye 
That finds no object worth its constancy? 

II. 

Thou chosen sister of the spirit. 
That gazes on thee till in thee it 
pities . . . 

DEATH. 

I. 

Death is here and death is there, 
Death is busy everywhere. 
All around, within, beneath, 
Above is death — and we are death. 

II. 

Death has set his mark and seal 
On all we are and all we feel, 
On all we know and all we fear, 



III. 



First our pleasures die — and then 

Our hopes, and then our fears — and 

when 
These are dead, the debt is due. 
Dust claims dust — and we die too. 

IV. 

All things that we love and cherish. 
Like ourselves must fade and perish, 
Such is our rude mortal lot — 
Love itself would, did they not. 



LIBERTY. 



The fiery mountains answer each other ; 
Their thunderings are echoed from 
zone to zone; 
The tempestuous oceans awake one an- 
other. 
And the ice-rocks are shaken round 
Winter's throne, 
When the clarion of the Typhoon 



556 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1820. 



From a single cloud the lightning flashes, 
Whilst a thousand isles are illumined 
around. 
Earthquake is trampling one city to ashes, 
A hundred are shuddering and totter- 
ing; the sound 
Is bellowing underground. 

III. 

But keener thy gaze than the lightning's 
glare, 
And swifter thy step than the earth- 
quake's tramp; 
Thou deafenest the rage of the ocean; 
thy stare 
Makes blind the volcanoes; the sun's 
bright lamp 
To thine is a fen-fire damp. 

IV. 

From billow and mountain and exhala- 
tion 
The sunlight is darted thro' vapor and 
blast; 
From spirit to spirit, from nation to 
nation, 
From city to hamlet thy dawning is 
cast, — 
And tyrants and slaves are like shadows 
of night 
In the van of the morning light. 

SUMMER AND WINTER. 

It was a bright and cheerful afternoon, 
Towards the end of the sunny month of 

June, 
When the north wind congregates in 

crowds 
The floating mountains of the silver 

clouds 
From the horizon — and the stainless sky 
Opens beyond them like eternity. 
All things rejoiced beneath the sun; the 

weeds, 
The river, and the cornfields, and the 

reeds: 
The willow leaves that glanced in the 

light breeze. 



It was a winter such as when birds die 
In the deep forests; and the fishes lie 
Stiffened in the translucent ice, which 

makes 
Even the mud and slime of the warm 

lakes 
A wrinkled clod as hard as brick; and 

when. 
Among their children, comfortable men 
Gather about great fires, and yet feel 

cold: 
Alas then for the homeless beggar old ! 

THE TOWER OF FAMINE. 

Amid the desolation of a city. 

Which was the cradle, and is now the 

grave 
Of an extinguisht people; so that pity 

Weeps o'er the shipwrecks of oblivion's 
wave, 

There stands the Tower of Famine. It 
is built 

Upon some prison homes, whose dwell- 
ers rave 

For bread, and gold, and blood: pain, 

linkt to guilt. 
Agitates the light flame of their hours, 
Until its vital oil is spent or spilt; 

There stands the pile, a tower amid the 
towers 

And sacred domes; each marble-ribbed 
roof. 

The brazen-gated temples, and the bow- 
ers 

Of solitary wealth; the tempest-proof 
Pavilions of the dark Italian air. 
Are by its presence dimmed — they 
stand aloof, 

And are withdrawn — so that the world 

is bare. 
As if a spectre wrapt in shapeless terror 
Amid a company of ladies fair 

Should glide and glow, till it became a 

mirror 
Of all their beauty, and their hair and 



^n?^»!111T^t^1?*^^^^^-^1<-?i'?s?^f?f^^ 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1820. 



557 



The life of their sweet eyes, with all its 

error, 
Should be absorbed, till they to marble 

grew. 

AN ALLEGORY. 



A PORTAL a^ of shadowy adamant 

Stands yawning on the highway of the 

life 
Which we all tread, a cavern huge and 

gaunt; 
Around it rages an unceasing strife 
Of shadows, like the restless clouds that 

haunt 
The gap of some cleft mountain, lifted 

high 
Into the whirlwinds of the upper sky. 



II. 



And many pass it by with careless tread, 

Not knowing that a shadowy . . . 
Tracks every traveller even to where the 
dead 
Wait peacefully for their companion 
new; 
But others, by more curious humor led 
Pause to examine, — these are very 
few, 
And they learn little there, except to 

know 
That shadows follow them where'er 
they go. 



THE WORLD'S WANDERERS. 



Tell me, thou star, whose wings of light 
Speed thee in thy fiery flight, 
In what cavern of the night 

Will thy pinions close now? 



II. 



Tell me, moon, thou pale and gray 
Pilgrim of heaven's homeless way, 
In what deoth of nifrht or dav 



III. 



Weary wind, who wanderest 
Like the world's rejected guest, 
Hast thou still some secret nest 
On the tree or billow? 



SONNET. 

Ye hasten to the grave ! What seek ye 

there, 
Ye restless thoughts and busy purposes 
Of the idle brain, which the world's 

livery wear ? 
Oh thou quick heart which pantest to 

possess 
All that pale Expectation feigneth fair ! 
Thou vainly curious mind which would- 

est guess 
Whence thou didst come, and whither 

thou must go. 
And all that never yet was known would 

know — 
Oh, whither hasten ye, that thus ye press, 
W'ith such swift feet life's green and 

pleasant path, 
Seeking, alike from happiness and woe, 
A refuge in the cavern of gray death? 
O heart, and mind, and thoughts ! what 

thing do you 
Hope to inherit in the grave below? 

LINES TO A REVIEWER. 

Alas, good friend, what profit can you 

see 
In hating such a hateless thing as me? 
There is no sport in hate when all the 

rage 
Is on one side; in vain would you as- 
suage 
Your frowns upon an unresisting smile, 
In which not even contempt lurks to 

beguile 
Your heart, by some faint sympathy of 

hate. 
Oh ! conquer what you cannot satiate; 
For to your passion I am far more coy 
Than ever yet was coldest maid or boy 
In winter noon. Of your antipathy, 
If I am the Narcissus, vou are free 



558 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1820. 



FRAGMENT OF A SATIRE ON 
SATIRE. 

If gibbets, axes, confiscations, chains, 
And racks of subtle torture, if the pains 
Of shame, of fiery Hell's tempestuous 

wave, 
Seen thro' the caverns of the shadowy 

grave, 
Hurling the damned into the murky air 
While the meek blest sit smiling; if De- 
spair 
And Hate, the rapid bloodhounds with 

which Terror 
Hunts thro' the world the homeless 

steps of Error, 
Are the true secrets of the commonweal 
To make men wise and just; . . . 
And not the sophisms of revenge and 

fear, 
Bloodier than is revenge . . . 
Then send the priests to every hearth 

and home 
To preach the burning wrath which is to 

come, 
In words like flakes of sulphur, such as 

thaw 
The frozen tears . . . 
If Satire's scourge could wake the slum- 
bering hounds 
Of Conscience, or erase the deeper 

wounds. 
The leprous scars of callous infamy; 
If it could make the present not to be. 
Or charm the dark past never to have 

been. 
Or turn regret to hope; who that has 

seen 
What Southey is and was, would not 

exclaim. 
Lash on ! be the keen verse 

dipt in flame; 
Follow his flight with winged words, 

and urge 
The strokes of the inexorable scourge 
Until the heart be naked, till his soul 
See the contagion's spots foul; 

And from the mirror of Truth's sunlike 

shield, 
From which his Parthian arrow . . . 



Until his mind's eye paint thereon — 
Let scorn like yawn below. 

And rain on him like flakes of fiery 

snow. 
This cannot be, it ought not, evil still — 
Suffering makes suffering, ill must follow 

ill. 
Rough words beget sad thoughts, 

and, beside, 
Men take a sullen and a stupid pride 
In being all they hate in others' shame, 
By a perverse antipathy of fame. 
'T is not worth while to prove, as I could, 

how 
From the sweet fountains of our Nature 

flow 
These bitter waters; I will only say. 
If any friend would take Southey some 

■ day. 
And tell him, in a country walk alone. 
Softening harsh words with friendship's 

gentle tone. 
How incorrect his public conduct is. 
And what men think of it, 't were not 

amiss. 
Far better than to make innocent ink — 



GOOD-NIGHT. 



Good-night ! ah ! no; the hour is ill 
Which severs those it should unite; 

Let us remain together still. 
Then it will be good night. 



II. 



How can I call the lone night good. 
Though thy sweet wishes wing its 
flight? 

Be it not said, thought, understood — 
Then it will be — good night. 



III. 

To hearts which near each other move 
From evening close to morning light, 



:4«M^«|it«>4U«li»iH|*|i«Mi>t^^ ; . 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1820. 



559 



BUONA NOTTE. 



I. 



**BuONA notte, buona notte ! " — Come 
mai 

La notte sara buona senza te? 
Non dirmi buona notte, — che tu sai, 

La notte sa star buona da per se. 



Solinga, scura, cupa, senza speme, 
La notte quando Lilla m'abbandona; 

Pei cuori chi si batton insieme 

Ogni notte, senza dirla, sara buona. 

III. 

Come male buona notte si suona 
Con sospiri e parole interrotte ! — 

II modo di aver la notte buona 
E mai non di dir la buona notte. 



ORPHEUS. 

A. Not far from hence. From yon- 
der pointed hill, 
Crowned with a ring of oaks, you may 

behold 
A dark and barren field, thro' which 

there flows, 
Sluggish and black, a deep but narrow 

stream, 
Which the wind ripples not, and the 

fair moon 
Gazes in vain, and finds no mirror there. 
Follow the herbless banks of that strange 

brook 
Until you pause beside a darksome pond. 
The fountain of this rivulet, whose gush 
Cannot be seen, hid by a rayless night 
That lives beneath the overhanging rock 
That shades the pool — an endless spring 

of gloom, 
Upon whose edge hovers the tender 

light, 
Trembling to mingle with its paramour, — 
But, as Syrinx fled Pan, so night flies 

_ day. 
Or, with most sullen and regardless hate, 



On one side of this jagged and shape- 
less hill 
There is a cave, from which there eddies 

up 
A pale mist, like aerial gossamer. 
Whose breath destroys all life — awhile 

it veils 
The rock — then, scattered by the wind, 

it flies 
Along the stream, or lingers on the clefts, 
Killing the sleepy worms, if aught bide 

there. 
Upon the beetling edge of that dark 

rock 
There stands a group of cypresses; not 

such 
As, with a graceful spire and stirring 

life. 
Pierce the pure heaven of your native 

vale. 
Whose branches the air plays among, 

but not 
Disturbs, fearing to spoil their solemn 

grace; 
But blasted and all wearily they stand. 
One to another clinging; their weak 

boughs 
Sigh as the wind buffets them, and they 

shake 
Beneath its blasts — a weatherbeaten 

crew ! 
Chorus. What wondrous sound is 

that, mournful and faint. 
But more melodious than the murmur- 
ing wind 
Which thro' the columns of a temple 

glides? 
A. It is the wandering voice of Or- 
pheus' lyre. 
Borne by the winds, who sigh that their 

rude king 
Hurries them fast from these air-feeding 

notes; 
But in their speed they bear along with 

them 
The waning sound, scattering it like dew 
Upon the startled sense. 

Chorus. Does he still sing? 

Methought he rashly cast away his harp 
When he had lost Eurydice. 

A. Ah no ! 

Awhile he paused. As a poor hunte«l 



56o 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1820. 



A moment shudders on the fearful brink 
Of a swift stream — the cruel hounds 

press on 
With deafening yell, the arrows glance 

and wound, — 
He plunges in: so Orpheus, seized and 

torn 
By the sharp fangs of an insatiate grief, 
Mgenad-like waved his lyre in the bright 

air, 
And wildly shriekt, "Where she is, it 

is dark!" 
And then he struck from forth the strings 

a sound 
Of deep and fearful melody. Alas ! 
In times long past, when fair Eurydice 
With her bright eyes sat listening by his 

side. 
He gently sang of high and heavenly 

themes. 
As in a brook, fretted with little waves, 
By the light airs of spring — each riplet 

makes 
A many-sided mirror for the sun. 
While it flows musically thro' green 

banks. 
Ceaseless and pauseless, ever clear and 

fresh. 
So flowed his song, reflecting the deep 

joy, 
And tender love that fed those sweetest 

notes, 
The heavenly offspring of ambrosial food. 
But that is past. Returning from drear 

Hell, 
He chose a lonely seat of unhewn stone. 
Blackened with lichens, on a herbless 

plain. 
Then from the deep and overflowing 

spring 
Of his eternal ever-moving grief 
There rose to Heaven a sound of angry 

song. 
T is as a mighty cataract that parts 
Two sister rocks with waters swift and 

strong. 
And casts itself with horrid roar and din 
Adown a steep; from a perennial source 
It ever flows and falls, and breaks the 

air 
With loud and fierce, but most harmo- 
nious roar, 



Which the sun clothes in hues of Iris 

light. 
Thus the tempestuous torrent of his grief 
Is clothed in sweetest sound and varying 

words 
Of poesy. Unlike all human works. 
It never slackens, and thro' every 

change 
Wisdom and beauty and the power divine 
Of mighty poesy together dwell, 
Mingling in sweet accord. As I have 

seen 
A fierce south blast tear thro' the dark- 
ened sky, 
Driving along a rack of winged clouds. 
Which may not pause, but ever hurry on, 
As their wild shepherd wills them, while 

the stars. 
Twinkling and dim, peep from between 

the plumes. 
Anon the sky is cleared, and the high 

dome 
Of serene Heaven, starred with fiery 

flowers, 
Shuts in the shaken earth; or the still 

moon 
Swiftly, yet gracefully, begins her walk. 
Rising all bright behind the eastern hills. 
I talk of moon, and wind, and stars, and 

not 
Of song; but would I echo his high song. 
Nature must lend me words ne'er used 

before. 
Or I must borrow from her perfect 

works. 
To picture forth his perfect attributes. 
He does no longer sit upon his throne 
Of rock upon a desert herbless plain, 
For the evergreen and knotted ilexes, 
And cypresses that seldom wave their 

boughs. 
And sea-green olives with their grateful 

fruit. 
And elms dragging along the twisted 

vines. 
Which drop their berries as they follow 

fast, 
And blackthorn bushes with their infant 

race 
Of blushing rose blooms; beeches, to 

lovers dear. 
And weeping- willow trees; all swift or 



■ . '?^?^WTt; « ;f ', t,--. ?;* •;T;^??f^<l^^^t*'?f?t^V?" ,=< 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1820. 



561 



As their huge boughs or lighter dress 

permit, 
Have circled in his throne, and Earth 

herself 
Has sent from her maternal breast a 

growth 
Of starlike flowers and herbs of odor 

sweet, 
To pave the temple that his poesy 
Has framed, while near his feet grim 

lions couch. 
And kids, fearless from love, creep near 

his lair. 
Even the blind worm seems to feel the 

sound. 
The birds are silent, hanging down their 

heads, 
Percht on the lowest branches of the 

trees; 
Not even the nightingale intrudes a note 
In rivalry, but all entranced she listens. 



FIORDISPINA. 

The season was the childhood of sweet 
June, 

Whose sunny hours from morning until 
noon 

Went creeping thro' the day with silent 
feet, 

Each with its load of pleasure, slow yet 
sweet; 

Like the long years of blest Eternity 

Never to be developt. Joy to thee, 

Fiordispina and thy Cosimo, 

For thou the wonders of the depth canst 
know 

Of this unfathomable flood of hours. 

Sparkling beneath the heaven which em- 
bowers — 

They were two cousins, almost like to 

twins, 
Except that from the catalogue of sins 
Nature had rased their love — which 

could not be 
But by dissevering their nativity. 
And so they grew together like two 

flowers 
Upon one stem, which the same beams 

and showers 



Which the same hand will gather — the 

same clime 
Shake with decay. This fair day smiles 

to see 
All those who love — and who e'er loved 

like thee, 
Fiordispina? Scarcely Cosimo, 
Within whose bosom and whose brain 

now glow 
The ardors of a vision which obscure 
The very idol of its portraiture. 
He faints dissolved into a sea of love: 
But thou art as a planet sphered above; 
But thou art Love itself — ruling the 

motion 
Of his subjected spirit : such emotion 
Must end in sin and sorrow, if sweet May 
Had not brought forth this morn — your 

wedding-day. 

Lie there; sleep awhile in your own dew 
Ye faint-eyed children of the 

Hours," 
Fiordispina said, and threw the flowers 
Which she had from the breathing — 

— A table near of polisht porphyry. 

They seemed to wear a beauty from the 
eye 

That lookt on them — a fragrance from 
the touch 

Whose warmth checkt their life; 

a light such 

As sleepers wear, lulled by the voice 
they love, 

which did reprove 

The childish pity that she felt for them, 

And a remorse that from their 

stem 

She had divided such fair shapes 
made 

A feeling in the which was a shade 

Of gentle beauty on the flowers; there 
lay 

All gems that make the earth's dark 
bosom gay, 
rods of myrtle-buds and lemon- 
blooms, 

And that leaf tinted lightly which as- 
sumes 

The livery of unremembered snow — 

Violets whose eves have drunk — 



562 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1820. 



Fiordispina and her nurse are now 
Upon the steps of the high portico; 
Under the withered arm of Media 
She flings her glowing arm 



step by step and stair by stair, 
That withered woman, gray and white 

and brown — 
More like a trunk by lichens overgrown 
Than anything which once could have 

been human. 
And ever as she goes the palsied woman 



*' How slow and painfully you seem to 

walk, 
Poor Media ! you tire yourself with 

talk." 

"And well it may, 
Fiordispina, dearest, well-a-day ! 
You are hastening to a marriage-bed; 
I to the grave ! " — *' And if my love 

were dead. 
Unless my heart deceives me, I would lie 
Beside him in my shroud as willingly 
As now in the gay night-dress Lilla 

wrought." 
*' Fie, child ! Let that unseasonable 

thought 
Not be remembered until it snows in 

June; 
Such fancies are a music out of tune 
With the sweet dance your heart must 

keep to-night. 
What ! would you take all beauty and 

delight 
Back to the Paradise from which you 

sprung, 
And leave to grosser mortals? — 
And say, sweet lamb, would you not 

learn the sweet 
And subtle mystery by which spirits 

meet? 
Who knows whether the loving game is 

played. 
When, once of mortal [vesture] dis- 
arrayed. 
The naked soul goes wandering here 

and there 
Thro' the wide deserts of Elvsian air? 



TIME LONG PAST. 



Like the ghost of a dear friend dead 

Is Time long past. 
A tone which is now forever fied, 
A hope which is now forever past, 
A love so sweet it could not last. 
Was Time long past. 



II. 

There were sweet dreams in the night 

Of Time long past : 
And, was it sadness or delight. 
Each day a shadow onward cast 
Which made us wish it yet might last - 
That Time long past. 



III. 

There is regret, almost remorse. 

For Time long past. 
'T is like a child's beloved corse 
A father watches, till at last 
Beauty is like remembrance, cast 

From Time long past. 



FRAGMENT; 



THE DESERTS OF 
SLEEP. 



I WENT into the deserts of dim sleep — 
That world, which like an unknown 

wilderness. 
Bounds this with its recesses wide and 

deep. 



FRAGMENT: CONSEQUENCE. 

The viewless and invisible Consequence 
Watches thy goings-out, and comings-in, 
And . . . hovers o'er thy guilty sleep, 
Unveiling every new-born deed, and 
thoup^hfs 



^«V*kt«»k«..i, •-..-. 



.■^t*»w*i.f*»yt**^«,^yi»i^ J 



NOTE ON POEMS OF 1820. 



563 



FRAGMENT: A FACE. 

His face was like a snake's — wrinkled 

and loose 
And withered. 



FRAGMENT: WEARINESS. 

My head is heavy, my limbs are weary, 
And it is not life that makes me move. 



FRAGMENT: HOPE, FEAR, AND 
DOUBT. 

Such hope, as is the sick despair of 

good. 
Such fear, as is the certainty of ill, 
Such doubt, as is pale Expectation's food 
Turned while she tastes to poison, when 

the will 
Is powerless, and the spirit . . . 

FRAGMENT; *'ALAS! THIS IS 
NOT WHAT I THOUGHT LIFE 
WAS."i 

Alas ! this is not what I thought life 

was. 
I knew that there were crimes and evil 

men. 
Misery and hate; nor did I hope to pass 
Untoucht by suffering, thro' the rugged 

glen. 
In mine own heart I saw as in a glass 
The hearts of others And when 

I went among my kind, with triple brass 
Of calm endurance my weak breast I 

armed. 
To bear scorn, fear, and hate, a woful 

mass ! 



FRAGMENT: MILTON'S SPIRIT. 

I DREAMED that Milton's spirit rose, and 
took 



From life's green tree his Uranian 

lute. 
And from his touch sweet thunder flowed, 

and shook 
All human things built in contempt of 

man, — 
And sanguine thrones and impious altars 

quaked. 
Prisons and citadels . . . 



FRAGMENT: UNRISEN 
SPLENDOR. 

Unrisen splendor of the brightest sun, 
To rise upon our darkness, if the star 
Now beckoning thee out of thy misty 

throne 
Could thaw the clouds which wage an 

obscure war 
With thy young brightness ! 



NOTE ON POEMS OF 1820, 
BY MRS. SHELLEY. 

We spent the latter part of the year 
1819 in Florence, where Shelley passed 
several hours daily in the Gallery, and 
made various notes on its ancient works 
of art. His thoughts were a good deal 
taken up also by the project of a steam- 
boat, undertaken by a friend, an engineer, 
to ply between Leghorn and Marseilles, 
for which he supplied a sum of money. 
This was a sort of plan to delight Shelley, 
and he was greatly disappointed when it 
was thrown aside. 

There was something in Florence that 
disagreed excessively with his health, and 
he suffered far more pain than usual; so 
much so that we left it sooner than we 
intended, and removed to Pisa, where we 
had some friends, and, above all, where 
we could consult the celebrated Vacca as 
to the cause of Shelley's sufferings. He, 
like every other medical man, could only 
guess at that, and gave him little hope 
of immediate relief; he enjoined him to 
abstain from all physicians and medicine, 
and to leave his comnlaint to Np.ture. 



564 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1821. 



of the highest repute in England, he was 
easily persuaded to adopt this advice. 
Pain and ill-health followed him to the 
end; but the residence at Pisa agreed 
with him better than any other, and there 
in consequence we remained. 

In the Spring we spent a week or two 
near Leghorn, borrowing the house of 
some friends who were absent on a jour- 
ney to England. It was on a beautiful 
summer evening, while wandering among 
the lanes whose myrtle-hedges were the 
bowers of the fireflies, that we heard the 
carolling of the skylark, which inspired 
one of the most beautiful of his poems. 
He addressed the letter to Mrs. Gisborne 
from this house, which was hers : he had 
made his study of the workshop of her 
son, who was an engineer. Mrs. Gis- 
borne had been a friend of my father in 
her younger days. She was a lady of 
great accomplishments, and charming 
from her frank and affectionate nature. 
She had the most intense love of knowl- 
edge, a delicate and trembling sensibility, 
and preserved freshness of mind after a 
life of considerable adversity. As a fa- 
vorite friend of my father, we had sought 
her with eagerness; and the most open 
and cordial friendship was established 
between us. 

Our stay at the Baths of San Giuliano 
was shortened by an accident. At the 
foot of our garden ran the canal that 
communicated between the Serchio and 
the Arno. The Serchio overflowed its 
banks, and, breaking its bounds, this 
canal also overflowed; all this part of the 
country is below the level of its rivers, 
and the consequence was that it was 
speedily flooded. The rising waters filled 
the Square of the Baths, in the lower 
part of which our house was situated. 
The canal overflowed in the garden be- 
hind; the rising waters on either side at 
last burst open the doors, and, meeting 
in the house, rose to the height of six 
feet. It was a picturesque sight at night 
to see the peasants driving their cattle 
from the plains below to the hills above 



relief against the red glare of the flame, 
which was reflected again in the waters 
that filled the Square. 

We then removed to Pisa, and took up 
our abode there for the wmter. The 
extreme mildness of the climate suited 
Shelley, and his solitude was enlivened 
by an intercourse with several intimate 
friends. Chance cast us strangely enough 
on this quiet half-unpeopled town; but 
its very peace suited Shelley. Its river, 
the near mountains, and not distant sea, 
added its attractions, and were the ob- 
jects of many delightful excursions. We 
feared the south of Italy, and a hotter 
climate, on account of our child; our 
former bereavement inspiring us with 
terror. We seemed to take root here, 
and moved little afterwards; often, in- 
deed, entertaining projects for visiting 
other parts of Italy, but still delaying. 
But for our fears on account of our child, 
I believe we should have wandered over 
the world, both being passionately fond 
of travelling. But human life, besides 
its great unalterable necessities, is ruled 
by a thousand Lilliputian ties that shackle 
at the time, although it is difficult to ac- 
count afterwards for their influence ovei 
our destiny. 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1821, 

DIRGE FOR THE YEAR. 

I. 

Orphan hours, the year is dead, 
Come and sigh, come and weep! 

Merry hours smile instead, 
For the year is but asleep. 

See, it smiles as it is sleeping, 

Mocking your untimely weeping. 

II. 

As an earthquake rocks a corse 

In its cofifin in the clay, 
So White Winter, that rough nurse, 






POEMS WRITTEN IN 182 1. 



565 



III. 

As the wild air stirs and sways 
The tree-swung cradle of a child, 

So the breath of these rude days 

Rocks the year: — be calm and mild, 

Trembling hours, she will arise 

With new love within her eyes. 



IV. 



January gray is here, 

Like a sexton by her grave; 
February bears the bier, 

March with grief doth howl and rave, 
And April weeps — but, O, ye hours, 
Follow with May's fairest flowers. 

TO NIGHT. 



Swiftly walk over the western wave, 

Spirit of Night ! 
Out of the misty eastern cave. 
Where all the long and lone daylight. 
Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear. 
Which make thee terrible and dear, — 

Swift be thy flight ! 

II. 

Wrap thy form in a mantle gray, 

Star-inwrought ! 
Blind with thine hair the eyes of Day: 
Kiss her until she be wearied out, 
Then wander o'er city, and sea, and land. 
Touching all with thine opiate wand — 

Come, long sought ! 

III. 

When I arose and saw the dawn, 

I sighed for thee; 
When light rode high, and the dew was 

gone, 
And noon lay heavy on flower and tree. 
And the weary day turned to his rest, 
Lingering like an unloved guest, 

I sighed for thee. 



IV. 



Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyed, 
Murmured like a noontide bee, 
Shall I nestle near thy side? 
" Wouldst thou me? " — And I replied, 
"No, not thee! " 



V. 

Death will come when thou art dead. 

Soon, too soon — 
Sleep will come when thou art fled; 
Of neither would I ask the boon 
I ask of thee, beloved Night — 
Swift be thine approaching flight, 
Come soon, soon ! 



TIME. \ 

Unfathomable Sea ! whose waves 
are years. 
Ocean of Time, whose waters of 

deep woe 
brackish with the salt of human 

tears ! 
Thou shoreless flood, which in thy 
ebb and flow 
Claspest the limits of mortality ! 
And sick of prey, yet howling on for 
more, 
Vomitest thy wrecks on its inhospitable 
shore; 
Treacherous in calm, and terrible in 
storm, 
Who shall put forth on thee, 
Unfathomable Sea? 



Are 



LINES. 



I. 



Far, far away, O ye 
Halcyons of memory. 
Seek some far calmer nest 
Than this abandoned breast;- 
No news of your false spring 
To mv heart's winter brine. 



566 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1821. 



II. 

Vultures, who build your bowers 
High in the Future's towers, 
Withered hopes on hopes are spread, 
Dying joys choked by the dead, 
Will serve your beaks for prey 
Many a day. 

FROM THE ARABIC: AN 
IMITATION. 

I. 

My faint spirit was sitting in the light 
Of thy looks, my love; 
It panted for thee like the hind at noon 
For the brooks, my love. 
Thy barb whose hoofs outspeed the tem- 
pest's flight 
Bore thee far from me; 
My heart, for my weak feet were weary 
soon, 
Did companion thee. 



Ah ! fleeter far than fleetest storm or 
steed, 
Or the death they bear, 
The heart which tender thought clothes 
like a dove 
With the wings of care; 
In the battle, in the darkness, in the 
need. 
Shall mine cling to thee. 
Nor claim one smile for all the com- 
fort, love. 
It may bring to thee. 



TO EMILIA VIVIANI. 

Madonna, wherefore hast thou sent 
to me 
Sweet basil and mignonette? 
Embleming love and health, which never 

yet 
In the same wreath might be. 
Alas, and they are wet ! 



From plant or flower — the very doubt 

endears 
My sadness ever new, 
The sighs I breathe, the tears I shed 

for thee. 
Send the stars light, but send not love 

to me. 
In whom love ever made 
Health like a heap of embers soon to 

fade. 



THE FUGITIVES. 



The waters are flashing, 
The white hail is dashing, 
The lightnings are glancing, 
The hoar-spray is dancing — ■ 
Away ! 

The whirlwind is rolling, 
The thunder is tolling, 
The forest is swinging. 
The minster bells tinging — 
Come away ! 

The Earth is like Ocean, 
Wreck-strewn and in motion! 
Bird, beast, man, and worm 
Have crept out of the storm, 
Come away ! 



II. 



" Our boat has one sail. 
And the helmsman is pale; — 
A bold pilot I trow, 
Who should follow us now," — 
Shouted He — 

And she cried: " Ply the oar ! 
Put off gayly from shore ! " — 
As she spoke, bolts of death, 
Mixt with hail, speckt their path 
O'er the sea. 

And from isle, tower, and rock, 
The blue beacon cloud broke. 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1821. 



567 



III. 

*' And fear'st thou, and fear'st thou? 
And see'st thou, and hear'st thou? 
And drive we not free 
O'er the terrible sea, 
I and thou?" 

One boat-cloak did cover 
The loved and the lover — 
Their blood beats one measure, 
They murmur proud pleasure 
Soft and low; — 

While around the lasht Ocean, 
Like mountains in motion. 
Is withdrawn and uplifted, 
Sunk, shattered and shifted 
To and fro. 



IV. 

In the court of the fortress 
Beside the pale portress, 
Like a bloodhound well beaten 
The bridegroom stands, eaten 
By shame; 

On the topmost watch-turret, 
As a death-boding spirit. 
Stands the gray tyrant father. 
To his voice the mad weather 
Seems tame; 

And with curses as wild 
As e'er clung to child, 
He devotes to the blast. 
The best, loveliest, and last 
Of his name ! 



TO 



Music, when soft voices die, 
Vibrates in the memory — 
Odors, when sweet violets sicken. 
Live within the sense they quicken. 

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead, 
Are heapt for the beloved's bed; 



SONG. 



Rarely, rarely, comest thou, 

Spirit of Delight ! 
Wherefore hast thou left me now 

Many a day and night? 
Many a weary night and day 
'T is since thou art fied away. 

II. 

How shall ever one like me 

Win thee back again ! 
With the joyous and the free 

Thou wilt scoff at pain. 
Spirit false ! thou hast forgot 
All but those who need thee not. 

III. 

As a lizard with the shade 

Of a trembling leaf, 
Thou with sorrow art dismayed; 

Even the sighs of grief 
Reproach thee, that thou art not near, 
And reproach thou will not hear. 

IV. 

Let me set my mournful ditty 

To a merry measure. 
Thou wilt never come for pity, 

Thou wilt come for pleasure. 
Pity then will cut away 
Those cruel wings, and thou wilt stay. 

V. 

I love all that thou lovest, 

Spirit of Delight ! 
The fresh Earth in new leaves drest. 

And the starry night; 
Autumn evening, and the morn 
When the golden mists are born. 

VI. 

I love snow and all the forms 

Of the radiant frost; 
I love waves, and winds, and storms, 

Every thing almost 



568 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1821. 



VII. 

I love tranquil solitude, 

And such society 
As is quiet, wise, and good; 

Between thee and me 
What difference? but thou dost possess 
The things I seek, not love them less. 



VIII. 

I love Love — though he has wings. 

And like light can flee, 
But above all other things, 

Spirit, I love thee — 
Thou art love and life ! Oh come. 
Make once more my heart thy home. 



MUTABILITY. 

The flower that smiles to-day 

To-morrow dies; 
All that we wish to stay 

Tempts and then flies. 
What is this world's delight? 
Lightning that mocks the night, 
Brief even as bright. 



II. 

Virtue, how frail it is ! 

Friendship how rare ! 
Love, how it sells poor bliss 

For proud despair ! 
But we, though soon they fall, 
Survive their joy and all 
Which ours we call. 



II. 

Whilst skies are blue and bright, 
Whilst flowers are gay, 

Whilst eyes that change ere night 
Make glad the day; 

Whilst yet the calm hours creep. 

Dream thou — and from thv <^lppn 



LINES WRITTEN ON HEARING 
THE NEWS OF THE DEATH OF 
NAPOLEON. 

What ! alive and so bold, oh earth? 

Art thou not overbold ! 

What ! leapest thou forth as of old 
In the light of thy morning mirth. 
The last of the flock of the starry fold? 
Ha! leapest thou forth as of old? 
Are not the limbs still when the ghost is 

fled, 
And canst thou move. Napoleon being 
dead? 

How ! is not thy quick heart cold? 

What spark is alive on thy hearth? 
How ! is not his death-knell knolled? 

And livest thou still, Mother Earth? 
Thou wert warming thy fingers old 
O'er the embers covered and cold 
Of that most fiery spirit, when it fled — > 
What, Mother, do you laugh now he i» 
dead? 

"Who has known me of old," replied 
Earth, 

*' Or who has my story told? 

It is thou who art overbold." 
And the lightning of scorn laught forth 
As she sung, " To my bosom I fold 
All my sons when their knell is knolled. 
And so with living motion all are fed. 
And the quick spring like weeds out of 
the dead. 

"Still alive and still bold," shouted 
Earth, 

" I grow bolder and still more bold. 

The dead fill me ten thousandfold 
Fuller of speed and splendor and mirth, 
I was cloudy, and sullen, and cold. 
Like a frozen chaos uprolled, 
Till by the spirit of the mighty dead 
My heart grew warm. I feed on whom 
I fed. 

"Ay, alive and still bold," muttered 
Earth, 

*' TVJ;5nnlpr>n'c fiprr** cnirit rnllfrl. 



POEMS WRITTEN- IN 1821 



569 



A torrent of ruin to death from his birth. 
Leave the millions who follow to mould 
The metal before it be cold; 
And weave into his shame, which like 

the dead 
Shrouds me, the hopes that from his 

glory fled." 



SONNET: POLITICAL GREAT- 
NESS. 

Nor happiness, nor majesty, nor fame, 
Nor peace, nor strength, nor skill in 

arms or arts, 
Shepherd those herds whom tyranny 

makes tame; 
Verse echoes not one beating of their 

hearts, 
History is but the shadow of their shame, 
Art veils her glass, or from the pageant 

starts 
As to oblivion their blind millions fleet. 
Staining that Heaven with obscene 

imagery 
Of their own likeness. What are num- 
bers knit 
By force or custom? Man who man 

would be, 
Must rule the empire of himself; in it 
Must be supreme, establishing his throne 
On vanquisht will, quelling the anarchy 
Of hopes and fears, being himself alone. 



THE AZIOLA. 



" Do you not hear the Aziola cry? 
Methinks she must be nigh," 
Said Mary, as we sate 
In dusk, ere stars were lit, or candles 
brought ; 

And I, who thought 
This Aziola was some tedious woman, 
Askt, "Who is Aziola?" How 
elate 
I felt to know that it was nothing 
human. 
No mockery of myself to fear or 
hate; 



And laught, and said, " Disquiet your- 
self not; 
'T is nothing but a little downy 
owl." 

II. 

Sad Aziola ! many an eventide 

Thy music I had heard 
By wood and stream, meadow and moun- 
tain side. 

And fields and marshes wide, 
Such as nor voice, nor lute, nor wind, 
nor bird. 

The soul ever stirred; 
Unlike and far sweeter than them all, 
Sad Aziola ! from that moment I 

Loved thee and thy sad cry. 



A LAMENT. 



O WORLD ! O life ! O time ! 
On whose last steps I climb 

Trembling at that where I had stood 
before : 
When will return the glory of your prime ? 
No more — oh, never more ! 



Out of the day and night 
A joy has taken flight; 

Fresh spring, and summer, and winter 
hoar. 
Move my faint heart with grief, but with 
delight 
No more — oh, never more ! 



REMEMBRANCE. 



Swifter far than summer's flight — 
Swifter far than youth's delight — 
Swifter far than happy night. 

Art thou come and gone — 
As the earth when leaves are dead, 
As the night when sleep is sped, 
As the heart when joy is fled, 



570 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 182 1. 



II. 



The swallow summer comes again — 
The owlet night resumes her reign — 
But the wild-swan youth is fain 

To fly with thee, false as thou. — 
My heart each day desires the morrow ; 
Sleep itself is turned to sorrow; 
Vainly would my winter borrow 

Sunny leaves from any bough. 

III. 

Lilies for a bridal bed — 
Roses for a matron's head — 
Violets for a maiden dead — 

Tansies let my flowers be : 
On the living grave I bear 
Scatter them without a tear — 
Let no friend, however dear, 

Waste one hope, one fear for me. 



TO EDWARD WILLIAMS. 



The serpent is shut out from paradise. 
The wounded deer must seek the 
herb no more 
In which its heart-cure lies : 
The widowed dove must cease to 
haunt a bower 
Like that from which its mate with 
feigned sighs 
Fled in the April hour. 
I too must seldom seek again 
Near happy friends a mitigated pain. 

II. 

Of hatred I am proud, — with scorn con- 
tent; 
Indifference, that once hurt me, now 
is grown 
Itself indifferent. 
But not to speak of love, pity alone 
Can break a spirit already more than 
bent. 
The miserable one 
Turns the mind's poison into food, — 



III. 

Therefore, if now I see you seldomer, 
Dear friends, dear friend I know 
that I only fly 
Your looks, because they stir 
Griefs that should sleep, and hopes 
that cannot die : 
The very comfort that they minister 
I scarce can bear, yet I, 
So deeply is the arrow gone, 
Should quickly perish if it were with- 
drawn. 

IV. 

When I return to my cold home, you ask 
Why I am not as I have ever been. 

You spoil me for the task 
Of acting a forced part in life's dull 
scene, — 
Of wearing on my brow the idle mask 
Of author, great or mean, 
In the world's carnival. I sought 
Peace thus, and but in you I found it not. 

V. 

Full half an hour to-day, I tried my lot 
With various flowers, and everyone 
still said, 
" She loves me — loves me not." 
And if this meant a vision long 
since fled — 
If it meant fortune, fame, or peace of 
thought — 
If it meant, — but I dread 
To speak what you may know too 
well : 
Still there was truth in the sad oracle. 

VI. 

The crane o'er seas and forests seeks her 
home; 
No bird so wild but has its quiet 
nest. 
When it no more would roam; 
The sleepless billows on the ocean's 
breast 
Break like a bursting heart, and die in 
foam, 

And thus at length find rest. 
Doubtless there is a place of peace 
Where mv weak heart and all its throbs 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1821. 



571 



VII. 

I askt her, yesterday, if she believed 
That I had resolution. One who 
had 
Would ne'er have thus relieved 
His heart with words, — but what 
his judgment bade 
Would do, and leave the scorner unre- 
lieved. 
These verses are too sad 
To send to you, but that I know, 
Happy yourself, you feel another's woe. 

TO . 



One word is too often profaned 

For me to profane it, 
One feeling too falsely disdained 

For thee to disdain it. 
One hope is too like despair 

For prudence to smother, 
And pity for thee more dear 

Than that from another. 

II. 

I can give not what men call love, 

But wilt thou accept not 
The worship the heart lifts above 

And the Heavens reject not. 
The desire of the moth for the star, 

Of the night for the morrow, 
The devotion to something afar 

From the sphere of our sorrow? 

TO . 



I. 

When passion's trance is overpast. 
If tenderness and truth could last 
Or live, whilst all wild feelings keep 
Some mortal slumber, dark and deep, 
I should not weep, I should not weep ! 

II. 

It were enough to feel, to see. 

Thy soft eyes gazing tenderly, 

And dream the rest — and burn and be 

The secret food of fires unseen. 



III. 

After the slumber of the year 

The woodland violets reappear, 

All things revive in field or grove, 

And sky and sea, but two, which move, 

And form all others, life and love. 

A BRIDAL SONG. 



The golden gates of Sleep unbar 

Where Strength and Beauty, met to- 
gether, 

Kindle their image like a star 
In a sea of glassy weather. 

Night, with all thy stars look down, — 
Darkness, weep thy holiest dew, — 
Never smiled the inconstant moon 

On a pair so true. 
Let eyes not see their own delight; — 
Haste, swift Hour, and thy flight 
Oft renew. 



II. 

Fairies, sprites, and angels keep her! 

Holy stars, permit no wrong! 
And return to wake the sleeper. 

Dawn, — ere it be long! 
O joy ! O fear ! what will be done 
In the absence of the sun ! 
Come along ! 



ANOTHER VERSION OF THE 
SAME. 

Night, with all thine eyes look down ! 

Darkness shed its holiest dew ! 
When ever smiled the inconstant moon 

On a pair so true? 
Hence, coy Hour ! and quench thy light, 
Lest eyes see their own delight ! 
Hence, swift hour ! and thy loved flight 
Oft renew. 

Boys, 
O joy ! O fear ! why may be done 
In the absence of the sun? 



572 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 182 1. 



The golden gates of sleep unbar ! 

When strength and beauty meet to- 
gether, 
Kindles their image like a star 
In a sea of glassy weather. 
Hence, coy hour ! and quench thy light. 
Lest eyes see their own delight ! 
Hence, swift hour ! and thy loved flight 
Oft renew. 

Girls. 

O joy ! O fear ! what may be done 
In the absence of the sun? 

Come along ! 

Fairies ! sprites ! and angels keep her ! 

Holiest powers, permit no wrong ! 
And return, to wake the sleeper, 

Dawn, ere it be long. 
Hence, swift hour ! and quench thy light, 
Lest eyes see their own delight ! 
Hence, coy hour, and thy loved flight 
Oft renew. 

Boys and Girls. 

O joy ! O fear ! what will be done 
In the absence of the sun? 

Come along ! 

ANOTHER VERSION OF THE 
SAME. 

Boys Sing. 

Night ! with all thine eyes look down ! 

Darkness ! weep thy holiest dew ! 
Never smiled the inconstant moon 

On a pair so true. 
Haste, coy Hour ! and quench all light. 
Lest eyes see their own delight ! 
Haste, swift Hour ! and thy loved flight 
Oft renew. 

Girls Sing. 

Fairies, sprites, and angels, keep her ! 

Holy stars ! permit no wrong ! 
And return to wake the sleeper. 

Dawn, ere it be long ! 
O joy ! O fear ! there is not one 
Of us can guess what may be done 



Boys. 
Oh ! linger long, thou envious eastern 
lamp 
In the damp 

Caves of the deep ! 
Girls. 
Nay, return, Vesper ! urge thy lazy car ! 
Swift unl)ar 
The gates of Sleep. 

Chorus. 
The golden gate of Sleep unbar. 

When Strength and Beauty, met to- 
gether. 
Kindle their image, like a star 

In a sea of glassy weather. 
May the purple mist of love 
Round them rise, and with them move. 
Nourishing each tender gem 
Which, like flowers, will burst from them. 
As the fruit is to the tree 
May their children ever be ! 



LOVE, HOPE, DESIRE, AND 
FEAR. 

And many there were hurt by that strong 
boy; 
His name, they said, was Pleasure. 
And near him stood, glorious beyond 

measure, 
Four Ladies who possess all empery 

In earth and air and sea. 
Nothing that lives from their award is 
free. 
Their names will I declare to thee. 
Love, Hope, Desire, and Fear, 
And they the regents are 
Of the four elements that frame the 

heart, 
And each diversely exercised her art 

By force or circumstance or sleight 
To prove her dreadful might 
Upon that poor domain. 
Desire presented her [false] glass and 
then 

The spirit dwelling there 
Was spellbound to embrace what seemed 
so fair 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1821. 



573 



It would have scorned the [shafts] of 
the avenger, 
And death, and penitence, and dan- 
ger, 

Had not then silent Fear 
Toucht with her palsying spear, 
So that as if a frozen torrent 
The blood was curdled in its cur- 
rent; 
It dared not speak, even in look or mo- 
tion, 
But chained within itself its proud devo- 
tion. 
Between Desire and Fear thou wert 
A wretched thing, poor heart ! 
Sad was his life who bore thee in his 
breast. 

Wild bird for that weak nest. 
Till Love even from fierce Desire it 

bought, 
And from the very wound of tender 

thought 
Drew solace, and the pity of sweet 

eyes 
Gave strength to bear those gentle ago- 
nies. 
Surmount the loss, the terror, and the 
sorrow. 
Then Hope approacht, she who 

can borrow 
For poor to-day, from rich to-mor- 
row, 
An,d Fear withdrew, as night when 

day 
Descends upon the orient ray, 
And after long and vain endurance 
The poor heart woke to her assu- 
rance. 

— At one birth these four were 
born 

With the world's forgotten morn, 

And from Pleasure still they hold 

All it circles, as of old. 

When, as summer lures the swal- 
low, 

Pleasure lures the heart to follow — 

O weak heart of little wit ! 

The fair hand that wounded it, 

Seeking, like a panting hare. 

Refuge in the lynx's lair. 



PROLOGUE TO HELLAS. 

Herald of Eternity. It is the day 
when all the sons of God 
Wait in the roofless senate-house, whose 

floor 
Is Chaos, and the immovable abyss 
Frozen by his steadfast word to hyaline 

The shadow of God, and delegate 

Of that before whose breath the universe 

Is as a print of dew. 

Hierarchs and kings 
Who from yon thrones pinnacled on the 

past 
Sway the reluctant present, ye who sit 
Pavilioned on the radiance or the gloom 
Of mortal thought, which like an exhala- 
tion 
Steaming from earth, conceals the of 

heaven 
Which gave it birth, assemble 

here 
Before your Father's throne; the swift 

decree 
Yet hovers, and the fiery incarnation 
Is yet withheld, clothed in which it shall 

annul 
The fairest of those wandering isles that 

gem 
The sapphire space of interstellar air, 
That green and azure sphere, that earth 

enwrapt 
Less in the beauty of its tender light 
Than in an atmosphere of living spirit 
Which interpenetrating all the . . . 

it rolls from realm to realm 
And age to age, and in its ebb and flow 
Impels the generations 
To their appointed place, 
Whilst the high Arbiter 
Beholds the strife, and at the appointed 

time 
Sends his decrees veiled in eternal . . . 

Within the circuit of this pendant orb 
There lies an antique region, on which 

fell 
The dews of thought in the world's 

golden dawn 



574 



POEMS WRITTEN hV 1821. 



Temples and cities and iniinnrlal forms 
And liannonies of wisdom and of son<^, 
And thout^lits, and deeds worthy of 

thoughts so fair. 
And when the sun of its dominion failed, 
And when the winter of its glory came, 
The winds that stript it bare blew on and 

swei)t 
ihe dew into the utmost wildernesses 
In wandering clouds of sunny rain that 

thawed 
The unmatcrnal bosom of the North. 
Haste, sons of God, for ye 

beheld. 
Reluctant, or consenting, or astonisht. 
The stern decrees go forth, which heapt 

on Greece 
Ruin and degradation and despair. 
A fourth now waits: assemble, sons of 

God, 
To speed or to prevent or to suspend. 
If, as ye dream, such power be not with- 
held, 
The unaccomplisht destiny. 



Chorus. 

The curtain of the Universe 

Is rent and shattered. 
The splendor-winged worlds disperse 

Like wild doves scattered. 

Space is roofless and bare. 
And in the miilst a cloudy shrine, 

Dark amid thi'ones of light. 
In the blue glow of hyaline 
Golden worlds revolve and shine. 

In flight 

From every point of the Infinite, 

Like a thousand dawns on a single 
night 
The splendors rise and spread; 
And tliro' tlunuler and darkness dread 
Light and music are radiated, 
And in their pavilioned chariots led 
By living wings high overhead 

The giant Towers move. 
Gloomy or bright as the thrones they fill. 



The senate of the Gf)ds is met, 
Each in his rank and station set; 

There is silence in the spaces — • 
Lo ! Satan, ('hrist, and Mahomet 

Start from their places ! 
Christ. Almighty Father ! 

Low-kneeling at the feet of Destiny 

There are two fountains in which spirits 

weep 
When mortals err. Discord and Slavery 

named, 
And with their bitter dew two Destinies 
Filled each their irrevocable urns; the 

third. 
Fiercest and mightiest, mingled both, and 

added 
Chaos and Death, and slow Oblivion's 

lymph. 
And hate and terror, and the poisoned 

rain 

The Aurora of the nations. By this 

brow 
Whose pores wept tears of blood, by 

these wide wounds. 
By this imperial crown of agony, 
By infamy and solitude and death, 
For this I underwent, and by the pain 
Of pity for those who would for 

me 
Tlie unremembered joy of a revenge, 
For this I felt — by J'lato's sacred light. 
Of which my spirit was a burning mor- 
row — 
By Greece and all she cannot cease to be. 
Her quenchless words, sparks of immor- 
tal truth, 
vStars of all night — her harmonies and 

forms. 
Echoes and shadows of what Love adores 
In thee, I do compel thee, send forth 

Fate, 
Thy irrevocable child: let her descend 
A seraph-winged victory [arrayed] 
In tempest of the omnipotence of God 
Which sweeps through all things. 

From hollow leagues, from Tyranny 



OEMS WRITTEN IN 1S21. 



575 



To stamp, as on a winged serpent's 

seed, 
Upon the name of I'reedoin; from the 

storm 
Of faction which like cnrth(ninke shakes 

and sickens 
The sohd heart of enterjirise; from all 
By which the holiest dreams of highest 

spirits 
Are stars beneath the dawn . . . 

She shall arise 
Victorious as the world arose from 

Chaos ! 
And as the Heavens and the Earth 

arrayed 
Their presence in the beauty and the 

light 
Of thy first smile, O Father, as they 

gather 
The spirit of thy love which paves for 

them 
Their path o'er tlie abyss, till every 

splierc 
Shall be ojie living Spirit, so shall 

Greece — 
Satan. Be as all things beneath the 

empyrean, 
Mine! Art thou eyeless like old Des- 
tiny, 
Tiiou mockery-king, crowned with a 

wreath of thorns? 
Whose scejitre is a reed, the broken reed, 
Which pierces thee ! whose tlirone a 

chair of scorn; 
For seest tliou not beneath this crystal 

floor 
The innumera])le worlds of golden light 
Which are my empire, and the least of 

them 

which thou woiddst redeem 

from me? 
Know'st thou nf)t them my portion? 
Or wouldst rekindle the strife 

Which our great Father then did arbitrate 
Which he assigned to his c<)nii)iling 

sons 
Each his apportioned realm? 

Thou Destiny, 
Thou who art mailed in the omnipotence 
Of Him who sends thee forth, whate'er 

thv task. 



Thy tro])hies, whether Oreece again be- 
come 

Tile fountain in tlie desert whence the earth 

Shall drink of freedom, which shall give 
it strengtli 

'l"o suffer, or a gulf of hollow death 

To swallow all delight, ail life, all hope. 

Cio, thou Vicegcnnt of my will, no less 

Than of the I'ather's; but lest thou 
sliovddst faint, 

The winged hounds, l'"ainine and Pesti- 
lence, 

Shall wait on thee, the hundred-forked 
snake 

Insatiate Superstition still shall . . . 

The earth behind thy steps, and War 
shall liover 

Above, and I'raud shall gape l)clow, and 
Change 

Shall flit before thee on her dragon wings, 

C'onvulsing and consuming, and I add 

Three vials of the tears which demons 
weep 

When virtuous spirits tlno' the gate of 
Death 

Bass triumphing over the thorns of life, 

Sceptres and crowns, mitres and swords 
and snares 

Trampling in scorn, like Him and Soc- 
rates. 

The first is Anarchy; when Bower and 
Bleasurc, 

Glory and science and security, 

On Freedom hang like fruit on the green 
tree. 

Then pour it forth, and men shall gather 
ashes. 

The second Tyranny — 

Christ. Obdurate spirit ! 

Thou seest but the Bast in the To-come. 

Bride is thy error and thy punishment. 

Boast not thine emjiire, dream not that 
thy worlds 

Are more than furnace-sparks or rainbow- 
drops 

Before the Bower that wields and kindles 
them. 

True greatness asks not space, true ex- 
cellence 

Lives in the Spirit of all things that live, 

Which lends it to the worlds thou callest 



576 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1821. 



Mahomet. , . . Haste thou and 

fill the waning crescent 
With beams as keen as those which 

pierced the shadow 
Of Christian night rolled back upon the 

West 
When the orient moon of Islam rode in 

triumph 
From Tmolus to the Acroceraunian snow. 

Wake, thou Word 
Of God, and from the throne of Destiny 
Even to the utmost limit of thy way 
May Triumph 

Be thou a curse on them whose 
creed 
Divides and multiplies the most high 
God. 



FRAGMENTS WRITTEN FOR 
HELLAS. 

I. 

Fairest of the Destinies, 
Disarray thy dazzling eyes: 
Keener far thy lightnings are 

Than the winged [bolts] thou 
bear est, 

And the smile thou wearest 
Wraps thee as a star 

Is wrapt in light. 

II. 

Could Arethuse to her forsaken urn 
From Alpheus and the bitter Doris run, 
Or could the morning shafts of purest 

Again into the quivers of the Sun 

Be gathered — could one thought from 
its wild flight 
Return into the temple of the brain 

Without a change, without a stain, — 
Could aught that is, ever again 
Be what it once has ceased to be, 
Greece might again be free ! 



III. 



A quenchless atom of immortal light, 
A living spark of Night, 
A cresset shaken from the constellations 
Swifter than the thunder fell 
To the heart of Earth, the well 
Where its pulses flow and beat, 
And unextinct in that cold source 
Burns, and on course 

Guides the sphere which is its prison, 
Like an angelic spirit pent 
In a form of mortal birth, 
Till, as a spirit half arisen 

Shatters its charnel, it has rent. 

In the rapture of its mirth. 

The thin and painted garment of the 

Earth, 
Ruining its chaos — a fierce breath 
Consuming all its forms of living death. 



FRAGMENT; 



' I WOULD NOT BE 

KING." 



I WOULD not be a king — enough 

Of woe it is to love; 
The path to power is steep and rough. 

And tempests reign above. 
I would not climb the imperial throne; 
'T is built on ice which fortune's sun 

Thaws in the height of noon. 
Then farewell, king, yet were I one. 

Care would not come so soon. 
Would he and I were far away 
Keeping flocks on Himalay ! 



GINEVRA. 

Wild, pale, and wonder-stricken, even 

as one 
Who staggers forth into the air and sun 
From the dark chamber of a mortal 

fever. 
Bewildered, and incapable, and ever 
Fancying strange comments in her dizzy 

brain 
Of usual shapes, till the familiar train 
Of objects and of persons past like 

things 
Strange as a dreamer's mad imaginings. 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1821. 



57) 



Rung in her brain still with a jarring din, 
Deafening the lost intelligence within. 

And so she moved under the bridal 

veil, 
Which made the paleness of her cheek 

more pale, 
And deepened the faint crimson of her 

mouth. 
And darkened her dark locks as moon- 
light doth,— 
And of the gold and jewels glittering 

there 
She scarce felt conscious, — but the 

weary glare 
Lay like a chaos of unwelcome light, 
Vexing the sense with gorgeous unde- 

light. 
A moonbeam in the shadow of a cloud 
Was less heavenly fair — her face was 

bowed. 
And as she past, the diamonds in her hair 
Were mirrored in the polisht marble 

stair 
Which led from the cathedral to the 

street: 
And ever as she went her light fair feet 
Erased these images. 

The bride - maidens who round her 

thronging came. 
Some with a sense of self-rebuke and 

shame, 
Envying the unenviable; and others 
Making the joy which should have been 

another's 
Their own by gentle sympathy; and 

some 
Sighing to think of an unhappy home : 
Some few admiring what can ever lure 
Maidens to leave the heaven serene and 

pure 
Of parents' smiles for life's great cheat; 

a thing 
Bitter to taste, sweet in imagining. 

But they are all disperst — and, lo ! 
she stands 
Looking in idle grief on her white hands, 
Alone within the garden now her own; 
And thro' the sunny air, with jangling 



Killing the azure silence, sinks and 

swells; — 
Absorbed like one within a dream who 

dreams 
That he is dreaming, until slumber 

seems 
A mockery of itself — when suddenly 
Antonio stood before her, pale as she. 
With agony, with sorrow, and with 

pride, 
He lifted his wan eyes upon the bride. 
And said — "Is this thy faith?" and 

then as one 
Whose sleeping face is stricken by the 

sun 
With light like a harsh voice, which bids 

him rise 
And look upon his day of life with eyes 
Which weep in vain that they can dream 

no more, 
Ginevra saw her lover, and forbore 
To shriek or faint, and checkt the stifling 

blood 
Rushing upon her heart, and unsubdued 
Said — "Friend, if earthly violence or 

Suspicion, doubt, or the tyrannic will 
Of parents, chance, or custom, time or 

change, 
Or circumstance, or terror, or revenge. 
Or wildered looks, or words, or evil 

speech, 
With all their stings and venom can im- 
peach 
Our love, — we love not : — if the grave 

which hides 
The victim from the tyrant, and divides 
The cheek that whitens from the eyes 

that dart 
Imperious inquisition to the heart 
That is another's could dissever ours, 
We love not." — "What! do not the 

silent hours 
Beckon thee to Gherardi's bridal bed? 
Is not that ring " — a pledge, he would 

have said. 
Of broken vows, but she with patient 

look 
The golden circle from her finger took. 
And said — "Accept this token of my 

faith, 



578 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1821. 



And I am dead or shall be soon — my 

knell 
Will mix its music with that merry bell; 
Does it not sound as if they sweetly said 
' We toll a corpse out of the marriage- 
bed?' 
The flowers upon my bridal chamber 

strewn 
Will serve unfaded for my bier — so soon 
That even the dying violet will not die 
Before Ginevra." The strong fantasy 
Had made her accents weaker and more 

weak, 
And quencht the crimson life upon her 

cheek, 
And glazed her eyes, and spread an at- 
mosphere 
Round her, which chilled the burning 

noon with fear. 
Making her but an image of the thought. 
Which, like a prophet or a shadow, 

brought 
News of the terrors of the coming time. 
Like an accuser branded with the crime 
He would have cast on a beloved friend, 
Whose dying eyes reproach not to the end 
The pale betrayer — he then with vain 

repentance 
Would share, he cannot now avert, the 

sentence — 
Antonio stood and would have spoken, 

when 
The compound voice of women and of 

men 
Was heard approaching; he retired, 

while she 
Was led amid the admiring company 
Back to the palace, — and her maidens 

soon 
Changed her attire for the afternoon. 
And left her at her own request to keep 
An hour of quiet and rest. — Like one 

asleep 
With open eyes and folded hands she 

lay. 
Pale in the light of the declining day. 

Meanwhile the day sinks fast, the sun 
is set. 
And in the lighted hall the guests are 
met; 



Reflected from a thousand hearts and 

eyes 
Kindling a momentary Paradise. 
This crowd is safer than the silent wood, 
Where love's own doubts disturb the 

solitude; 
On frozen hearts the fiery rain of wine 
Falls, and the dew of music more divine 
Tempers the deep emotions of the time 
To spirits cradled in a sunny clime: — 
How many meet who never yet have met, 
To part too soon, but never to forget ! 
How many saw the beauty, power and 

wit 
Of looks and words which ne'er en- 
chanted yet ! 
But life's familiar veil was now with- 
drawn, 
As the world leaps before an earthquake's 

dawn. 
And unprophetic of the coming hours. 
The matin winds from the expanded 

flowers, 
Scatter their hoarded incense, and 

awaken 
The earth, until the dewy sleep is shaken 
From every living heart which it pos- 
sesses, 
Thro' seas and winds, cities and wilder- 
nesses. 
As if the future and the past were all 
Treasured i' the instant; — so Gherardi's 

hall 
Laught in the mirth of its lord's festival. 
Till some one askt — "Where is the 

Bride? " And then 
A bride's-maid went, — and ere she came 

again 
A silence fell upon the guests — a pause 
Of expectation, as when beauty awes 
All hearts with its approach, tho' unbe- 

held; 
Then wonder, and then fear that wonder 

quelled; — 
For whispers past from mouth to ear 

which drew 
The color from the hearer's cheeks, and 

flew 
Louder and swifter round the company; 
And then Gherardi entered with an eye 
Of ostentatious trouble, and a crowd 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 182 1. 



579 



They found Ginevra dead ! if it be death, 
To lie without motion, or pulse, or breath, 
With waxen cheeks, and limbs cold, stiff, 

and white. 
And open eyes, whose fixt and glassy 

light 
Mockt at the speculation they had owned. 
If it be death, when there is felt around 
A smell of clay, a pale and icy glare, 
And silence, and a sense that lifts the 

hair 
From the scalp to the ankles, as it were 
Corruption from the spirit passing forth. 
And giving all it shrouded to the earth. 
And leaving as swift lightning in its flight 
Ashes, and smoke, and darkness : in our 

night 
Of thought we know thus much of death, 

— no more 
Than the unborn dream of our life before 
Their barks are wreckt on its inhospitable 

shore. 

The marriage feast and its solemnity 

Was turned to funeral pomp — the com- 
pany 

With heavy hearts and looks, broke up; 
nor they 

Who loved the dead went weeping on 
their way 

Alone, but sorrow mixt with sad surprise 

Loosened the springs of pity in all 
eyes. 

On which that form, whose fate they 
weep in vain, 

Will never, thought they, kindle smiles 
again. 

The lamps which half extinguish! in their 
haste 

Gleamed lew and faint o'er the aban- 
doned feast, 

Showed as it were within the vaulted 
room 

A cloud of sorrow hanging, as if gloom 

Had past out of men's minds into the air. 

Some few yet stood around Gherardi 
there. 

Friends and relations of the dead, — 
and he, 

A loveless man, accepted torpidly 

The consolation that he wanted not. 



Their whispers made the solemn silence 

seem 
More still — some wept, . . . 
Some melted into tears without a sob, 
And some with hearts that might be 

heard to throb 
Leant on the table, and at intervals 
Shuddered to hear thro' the deserted 

halls 
And corridors the thrilling shrieks which 

came 
Upon the breeze of night, that shook the 

flame 
Of every torch and taper as it swept 
From out the chamber where the women 

kept; — 
Their tears fell on the dear companion 

cold 
Of pleasures now departed; then was 

knolled 
The bell of death, and soon the priests 

arrived. 
And finding death their penitent had 

shrived. 
Returned like ravens from a corpse 

whereon 
A vulture has just feasted to the bone. 
And then the mourning women came. — 



THE DIRGE. 

Old winter was gone 
In his weakness back to the mountains 
hoar. 
And the spring came down 
From the planet that hovers upon the 
shore 
Where the sea of sunlight encroaches 
On the limits of wintry night; — 
If the land, and the air, and the sea. 

Rejoice not when spring approaches, 
We did not rejoice in thee, 
Ginevra ! 

She is still, she is cold 

On the bridal couch, 
One step to the white death-bed, 

And one to the bier. 
And one to the charnel — and one, oh 
where ? 



58o 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1821. 



Ere the sun thro' heaven once more has 

rolled, 
The rats in her heart 
Will have made their nest, 
And the worms be alive in her golden 

hair, 
While the spirit that guides the sun, 
Sits throned in his flaming chair, 

She shall sleep. 



EVENING: PONTE A MARE, 
PISA. 

I. 

The sun is set; the swallows are asleep; 
The bats are flitting fast in the gray air; 
The slow soft toads out of damp corners 
creep, 
And evening's breath, wandering here 
and there 
Over the quivering surface of the stream. 
Wakes not one ripple from its summer 
dream. 

II. 

There is no dew on the dry grass to-night. 
Nor damp within the shadow of the 

trees; 
The wind is intermitting, dry, and light; 
And in the inconstant motion of the 

breeze 
The dust and straws are driven up and 

down. 
And whirled about the pavement of the 

town. 

III. 

Within the surface of the fleeting riVer 
The wrinkled image of the city lay, 

Immovably unquiet, and for ever 

It trembles, but it never fades away; 

Go to the . . . 

You, being changed, will find it then as 
now. 

IV. 

The chasm in which the sun has sunk 
is shut 



Growing and moving upwards in a 

crowd. 
And over it a space of watery blue, 
Which the keen evening star is shining 

thro'. 



THE BOAT ON THE SERCHIO. 

Our boat is asleep on Serchio's stream, 
Its sails are folded like thoughts in a 

dream. 
The helm sways idly, hither and thither; 
Dominic, the boatman, has brought 

the mast. 
And the oars and the sails; but 't is 
sleeping fast, 
Like a beast, unconscious of its tether. 

The stars burnt out in the pale blue air. 
And the thin white moon lay withering 

there. 
To tower, and cavern, and rift and tree, 
The owl and the bat fled drowsily. 
Day had kindled the dewy woods, 

And the rocks above and the stream 

below. 
And the vapors in their multitudes. 
And the Apennine's shroud of summer 

snow. 
And clothed with light of aery gold 
The mists in their eastern caves uproUed. 

Day had awakened all things that be. 
The lark and the thrush and the swallow 
free, 
And the milkmaid's song and the 
mower's scythe. 
And the matin-bell and the mountain bee : 
Fire-flies were quencht on the dewy corn, 
Glow-worms went out on the river's 

brim. 
Like lamps which a student forgets to 
trim: 
The beetle forgot to wind his horn. 
The crickets were still in the meadow 
and hill : 
Like a flock of rooks at a farmer's gun 
Night's dreams and terrors, every one, 
Fled from the brains which are their 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1821. 



581 



Ul rose to do the task He set to each, 
Who shaped us to his ends and not our 
own; 
rhe million rose to learn, and one to 
teach 
What none yet ever knew or can be 
known. 
And many rose 
Whose woe was such that fear became 
desire; — 
4elchior and Lionel were not among 

those; 
"hey from the throng of men had stept 

aside, 
^nd made their home under the green 

hillside, 
t was that hill, whose intervening brow 
Screens Lucca from the Pisan's envious 
eye, 
Vhich the circumfluous plain waving be- 
low, 
Like a wide lake of green fertility, 
Vith streams and fields and marshes bare. 
Divides from the far Apennines — 
which lie 
slanded in the immeasurable air. 

' What think you, as she lies in her green 

cove, 
)ur little sleeping boat is dreaming of ? " 
• If morning dreams are true, why I 

should guess 
'hat she was dreaming of our idleness, 
Lnd of the miles of watery way 
Ve should have led her by this time of 

day." — 

** Never mind," said Lionel, 

" Give care to the winds, they can bear 

it well 
About yon poplar tops; and see ! 
The white clouds are driving merrily, 
And the stars we miss this morn will 

light 
More willingly our return to-night. — 
How it whistles, Dominic's long black 

hair ! 
List my dear fellow; the breeze blows 

fair: 
Hear how it sings into the air." 



" If I can guess a boat's emotions; 
And how we ought, two hours 
before, 
To have been the devil knows where." 
And then, in such transalpine Tuscan 
As would have killed a Della-Cruscan, 

So, Lionel according to his art 

Weaving his idle words, Melchior 

said : 
"She dreams that we are not yet out 
of bed; 
We'll put a soul into her, and a heart 
Which like a dove chased by a dove shall 
beat." 

"Ay, heave the ballast over- 
board. 
And stow the eatables in the aft 

locker." 
"Would not this keg be best a little 

lowered? " 
" No, now all 's right." " Those bottles 

of warm tea — 
(Give me some straw) — must be stowed 

tenderly; 
Such as we used, in summer after six, 
To cram in great-coat pockets, and to mix 
Hard eggs and radishes and rolls at Eton, 
And, coucht on stolen hay in those green 

harbors 
Farmers called gaps, and we schoolboys 

called arbors, 
Would feast till eight." 

With a bottle in one hand. 
As if his very soul were at a stand, 
Lionel stood — when Melchior brought 

him steady : — 
"Sit at the helm — fasten this sheet — 

all ready!" 

The chain is loost, the sails are spread. 

The living breath is fresh behind. 
As with dews and sunrise fed. 

Comes the laughing morning wind ; — 
The sails are full, the boat makes head 
Against the Serchio's torrent fierce. 
Then flags with intermitting course, 
And hangs upon the wave, and stems 



582 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1821. 



Shallow, smooth and strong doth 

come, — 
Swift as fire, tempestuously 
It sweeps into the affrighted sea; 
In morning's smile its eddies coil, 
Its billows sparkle, toss and boil, 
Torturing all its quiet light 
Into columns fierce and bright. 

The Serchio, twisting forth 
Between the marble barriers which it 
clove 
At Ripafratta, leads thro' the dread 
chasm 
The wave that died the death which 
lovers love. 
Living in what it sought; as if this 
spasm 
Had not yet past, the toppling moun- 
tains cling, 
But the clear stream in full enthusiasm 
Pours itself on the plain, then wandering 
Down one clear path of effluence 
crystalline. 
Sends its superfluous waves, that they 
may fling 
At Arno's feet tribute of corn and 
wine. 
Then, thro' the pestilential deserts wild 
Of tangled marsh and woods of stunt- 
ed pine. 
It rushes to the Ocean. 



MUSIC. 



I PANT for the music which is divine. 
My heart in its thirst is a dying flower; 

Pour forth the sound like enchanted wine. 
Loosen the notes in a silver shower; 

Like a herbless plain, for the gentle rain, 

I gasp, I faint, till they wake again. 

II. 

Let me drink of the spirit of that sweet 
sound, 
More, oh more, — I am thirsting yet, 
It loosens the serpent which care has 
bound 
Upon my heart to stifle it; 
The dissolving strain, thro' every vein, 
Passes into my heart and brain. 



III. 

As the scent of a violet withered up. 
Which grew by the brink of a silver 
lake; 
When the hot noon has drained its dewy 
cup, 
And mist there was none its thirst to 
slake — 
And the violet lay dead while the odor 

flew 
On the wings of the wind o'er the waters 
blue — 

IV. 

As one who drinks from a charmed cup 
Of foaming and sparkling and mur- 
muring wine, 

Whom, a mighty Enchantress filling up, 
Invites to love with her kiss divine . . , 

SONNET TO BYRON. 

[I AM afraid these verses will not please 

you, but] 
If I esteemed you less, Envy would kill 
Pleasure, and leave to Wonder and 

Despair 
The ministration of the thoughts that fill 
The mind which, like a worm whose 

life may share 
A portion of the unapproachable, 
Marks your creations rise as fast and fair 
As perfect worlds at the Creator's will. 
But such is my regard that nor your 

power 
To soar aVjove the heights where others 

[climb]. 
Nor fame, that shadow of the unborn 

hour 
Cast from the envious future on the time. 
Move one regret for his unhonored name 
Who dares these words : — the worm be- 
neath the sod 
May lift itself in homage of the God. 

FRAGMENT ON KEATS, 

WHO DESIRED THAT ON HIS TOMB 

SHOULD BE INSCRIBED — ( 

*' Here lieth One whose name was writ ' 
on water." 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1S21. 



583 



But, ere the breath that could erase it 
blew, 
Death, in remorse for that fell slaughter, 
Death, the immortalizing winter, flew 
Athwart the stream, — and time's 
printless torrent grew 
A scroll of crystal, blazoning the name 
Of Adonais. — 

FRAGMENT : ** METHOUGHT I 
WAS A BILLOW IN THE 
CROWD." 

Methought I was a billow in the crowd 
Of common men, that stream without 
a shore. 
That ocean which at once is deaf and 
loud; 
That I, a man, stood amid many more 
By a wayside .... which the aspect 
bore 
Of some imperial metropolis. 

Where mighty shapes — pyramid, 
dome, and tower — 
Gleamed like a pile of crags. 

TO-MORROW. 

Where art thou, beloved To-morrow? 

When young and old and strong and 
weak. 
Rich and poor, thro' joy and sorrow. 

Thy sweet smiles we ever seek, — 
In thy place — ah! well-a-day ! 
We find the thing we fled — To-day. 

STANZA, i 

If I walk in Autumn's even 

While the dead leaves pass. 
If I look on Spring's soft heaven, — 

Something is not there which was. 
Winter's wondrous frost and snow, 
Summer's clouds, where are they now? 

FRAGMENT: A WANDERER. 

He wanders, like a day-appearing dream. 
Thro' the dim wildernesses of the 
mind; 

1 Perhaps in continuation of " To-morrow." — 
£d. 



Thro' desert woods and tracts, which 
seem 
Like ocean, homeless, boundless, un- 
confined. 

FRAGMENT: PEACE SURROUND- 
ING LIFE. 

The babe is at peace within the womb, 
The corpse is at rest within the tomb. 
We begin in what we end. 

FRAGMENT: "I FAINT, I PERISH 
WITH MY LOVE!" 

I FAINT, I perish with my love ! I grow 
Frail as a cloud whose [splendors] 
pale 

Under the evening's ever-changing glow : 
I die like mist upon the gale. 

And like a wave under the calm I fail. 



FRAGMENT: THE LADY OF THE 
SOUTH. 

Faint with love, the Lady of the 
South 
Lay in the paradise of Lebanon 
Under a heaven of cedar boughs; the 
drouth 
Of love was on her lips; the light was 
gone 
Out of her eyes. 

FRAGMENT: THE AWAKENER. 

Come, thou awakener of the spirit's 
ocean. 
Zephyr, whom to thy cloud or cave 
No thought can trace ! speed with thy 
gentle motion ! 

FRAGMENT: RAIN. 

The gentleness of rain was in the wind. 

FRAGMENT: AMBUSHED 
DANGERS. 

When soft winds and sunny skies 
With the green earth harmonize, 



584 



NOTE ON POEMS OF 1821. 



And the young and dewy dawn, 
Bold as an unhunted fawn, 
Up the windless heaven is gone, — 
Laugh — for ambusht in the day, — 
Clouds and whirlwinds watch their 
prey. 

FRAGMENT: "AND THAT I 
WALK THUS PROUDLY 
CROWNED." 

And that I walk thus proudly crowned 

withal 
Is that 't is my distinction; if I fall, 
I shall not weep out of the vital day, 
To-morrow dust, nor wear a dull decay. 

FRAGMENT: "THE RUDE WIND 
IS SINGING." 

The rude wind is singing 

The dirge of the music dead, 

The cold worms are clinging 
Where kisses were lately fed. 

FRAGMENT: " GREAT SPIRIT." 

Great Spirit whom the sea of boundless 
thought 

Nurtures within its unimagined caves. 
In which thou sittest sole, as in my mind, 

Giving a voice to its mysterious waves. 

FRAGMENT: "O THOU 
IMMORTAL DEITY." 

thou immortal deity 

Whose throne is in the depth of human 
thought, 

1 do adjure thy power and thee 

By all that man may be, by all that he 
is not. 
By all that he has been and yet must be ! 

FRAGMENT: FALSE LAURELS 
AND TRUE. 

"What art thou. Presumptuous, who 
profanest 
The wreath to mighty poets only due, 



Even whilst like a forgotten moon thou 
wanest ? 
Touch not those leaves which for the 
eternal few 
Who wander o'er the paradise of fame, 
• In sacred dedication ever grew : 
One of the crowd thou art without a 
name." 
"Ah, friend, 't is the false laurel that 
I wear; 
Bright tho' it seem, it is not the same 
As that which bound Milton's immor- 
tal hair; 
Its dew is poison and the hopes that 
quicken 
Under its chilling shade, tho' seeming 
fair. 
Are flowers which die almost before they 
sicken." 



NOTE ON POEMS OF 1821, BY 
MRS. SHELLEY. 

My task becomes inexpressibly painful 
as the year draws near that which sealed 
our earthly fate, and each poem, and each 
event it records, has a real or mysterious 
connection with the fatal catastrophe. I 
feel that I am incapable of putting on 
paper the history of those times. The 
heart of the man, abhorred of the poet, 
who could 

" peep and botanise 
Upon his mother's grave," 

does not appear to me more inexplicably 
framed than that of one who can dissect 
and probe past woes, and repeat to the 
public ear the groans drawn from them in 
the throes of their agony. 

The year 1821 was spent in Pisa, or at 
the Baths of San Giuliano. We were not, 
as our wont had been, alone; friends had 
gathered round us. Nearly all are dead, 
and, when Memory recurs to the past, she 
wanders among tombs. The genius, with 
all his blighting errors and mighty powers; 
the companion of Shelley's ocean-wan- 
derings, and the sharer of his fate, than 
whom no man ever existed more gentle, 
generous, and fearless, and others, who 
found in Shelley's society, and in his 
great knowledge and warm sympathy, 






™«BaHiBWia*i^wiaffig«tigagt»ac«Ktt»a;^t8mit»«OT^wai 



NOTE ON POEMS OF 1821. 



585 



delight, instruction, and solace; have 
joined him beyond the grave. A few 
survive who have felt life a desert since 
he left it. What misfortune can equal 
death ? Change can convert every other 
into a blessing, or heal its sting — death 
alone has no cure. It shakes the foun- 
dations of the earth on which we tread; 
it destroys its beauty; it casts down our 
shelter; it exposes us bare to desolation. 
When those we love have passed into 
eternity, " life is the desert and the soli- 
tude " in which we are forced to linger 
— but never find comfort more. 

There is much in the "Adonais " which 
seems now more applicable to Shelley 
himself than to the young and gifted poet 
whom, he mourned. The poetic view he 
takes of death, and the lofty scorn he 
displays towards his calumniators, are as 
a prophecy on his own destiny when re- 
ceived among immortal names, and the 
poisonous breath of critics has vanished 
into emptiness before the fame he inherits. 

Shelley's favorite taste was boating; 
when living near the Thames or by the 
Lake of Geneva, much of his life was 
spent on the water. On the shore of 
every lake or stream or sea near which he 
dwelt, he had a boat moored. He had 
latterly enjoyed this pleasure again. There 
are no pleasure-boats on the Arno; and 
the shallowness of its waters (except in 
winter-time, when the stream is too tur- 
bid and impetuous for boating) rendered 
it difficult to get any skiff light enough 
to float. Shelley, however, overcame 
the difficulty; he, together with a friend, 
contrived a boat such as the huntsmen 
carry about with them in the Maremma, 
to cross the sluggish but deep streams 
that intersect the forests, — a boat of 
laths and pitched canvas. It held three 
persons; and he was often seen on the 
Arno in it, to the horror of the Italians, 
who remonstrated on the danger, and 
could not understand how any one could 
take pleasure in an exercise that risked 
life. "Ma va per la vita!" they ex- 
claimed. I little thought how true their 
words would prove. He once ventured, 
with a friend, on the glassy sea of a calm 
day, down the Arno and round the coast 



to Leghorn, which, by keeping close in 
shore, was very practicable. They re- 
turned to Pisa by the canal, when, miss- 
ing the direct cut, they got entangled 
among weeds, and the boat upset; a wet- 
ting was all the harm done, except that 
the intense cold of his drenched clothes 
made Shelley faint. Once I went down 
with him to the mouth of the Arno, 
where the stream, then high and swift, 
met the tideless sea, and disturbed its 
sluggish waters. It was a waste and 
dreary scene; the desert sand stretched 
into a point surrounded by waves that 
broke idly though perpetually around; it 
was a scene very similar to Lido, of which 
he had said — 

" I love all waste 
And solitary places ; where we taste 
The pleasure of believing what we see 
Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be: 
And such was this wide ocean, and this shore 
More barren than its billows." 

Our little boat was of greater use, un- 
accompanied by any danger, when we 
removed to the Baths. Some friends 
lived at the village of Pugnano, four miles 
off, and we went to and fro to see them, 
in our boat, by the canal; which, fed by 
the Serchio, was, though an artificial, a 
full and picturesque stream, making its 
way under verdant banks, sheltered by 
trees that dipped their boughs into the 
murmuring waters. By day, multitudes 
of ephemera darted to and fro on the 
surface; at night, the fireflies came out 
among the shrubs on the banks; the 
cicale at noonday kept up their hum; the 
aziola cooed in the quiet evening. It was 
a pleasant summer, bright in all but 
Shelley's health and inconstant spirits; 
yet he enjoyed himself greatly, and be- 
came more and more attached to the part 
of the country where chance appeared to 
cast us. Sometimes he projected taking 
a farm situated on the height of one of 
the near hills, surrounded by chestnut 
and pine woods, and overlooking a wide 
extent of country : or settling still farther 
in the maritime Apennines, at Massa. 
Several of his slighter and unfinished 
poems were inspired by these scenes, and 
by the companions around us. It is the 



586 



POMMS WRITTEN IN 1822. 



nature of that poetry, however, which 
overflows from the soul oftener to express 
sorrow and regret than joy; for it is when 
oppressed by the weight of Ufe, and away 
from those he loves, that the poet has 
recourse to the solace of expression in 
verse. 

Still, Shelley's passion was the ocean; 
and he wished that our summers, instead 
of being passed among the hills near 
Pisa, should be spent on the shores of 
the sea. It was very difficult to find a 
spot. We shrank from Naples from a 
fear that the heats would disagree with 
Percy : Leghorn had lost its only attrac- 
tion, since our friends who had resided 
there had returned to England, and 
Monte Nero being the resort of many 
English, we did not wish to find our- 
selves in the midst of a colony of chance 
travellers. No one then thought it pos- 
sible to reside at Via Reggio, which lat- 
terly has become a summer resort. The 
low lands and bad air of Maremma stretch 
the whole length of the western shores of 
the Mediterranean, till broken by the 
rocks and hills of Spezia. It was a 
vague idea, but Shelley suggested an ex- 
cursion to Spezia, to see whether it would 
be feasible to spend a summer there. 
The beauty of the bay enchanted him. 
We saw no house to suit us; but the 
notion took root, and many circum- 
stances, enchained as by fatality, oc- 
curred to urge him to execute it. 

He looked forward this autumn with 
great pleasure to the prospect of a visit 
from Leigh Hunt. When Shelley vis- 
ited Lord Byron at Ravenna, the latter 
had suggested his coming out, together 
with the plan of a periodical work in 
which they should all join. Shelley saw 
a prospect of good for the fortunes of 
his friend, and pleasure in his society; 
and instantly exerted himself to have 
the plan executed. He did not intend 
himself joining in the work: partly from 
pride, not wishing to have the air of 
acquiring readers for his poetry by asso- 
ciating it with the compositions of more 
popular writers; and also because he 
might feel shackled in the free expres- 
sion of his opinions, if any friends were 



to be compromised. By those opinions, 
carried even to their utmost extent, he 
wished to live and die, as being in his 
conviction not only true, but such as 
alone would conduce to the moral im- 
provement and happiness of mankind. 
The sale of the work might meanwhile, 
either really or supposedly, be injured 
by the free expression of his thoughts; 
and this evil he resolved to avoid. 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1822. 
THE ZUCCA. 



Summer was dead and Autumn was ex- 
piring. 
And infant Winter laught upon the 
land 
All cloudlessly and cold ; — when I, de- 
siring 
More in this world than any under- 
stand. 
Wept o'er the beauty, which like sea 
retiring. 
Had left the earth bare as the wave- 
worn sand 
Of my lorn heart, and o'er the grass and 

flowers 
Pale for the falsehood of the flattering 
Hours. 

II. 
Summer was dead, but I yet lived to 
weep 
The instability of all but weeping; 
And on the Earth lulled in her winter 
sleep 
I woke, and envied her as she was 
sleeping. 
Too happy Earth ! over thy face shall 
creep 
The wakening vernal airs, until thou, 
leaping 
From unremembered dreams, shalt see 
No death divide thy immortality. 

III. 

I loved — oh no, I mean not one of ye, 

Or any earthly one, tho' ye are dear 



^tl>«i,trt«Mi>imiiM>«>*»i«»>rafii»iiiyi»MBMmB^^ 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1822. 



587 



As human heart to human heart may 

be;- 
I loved, I know not what — but this 

low sphere 
And all that it contains, contains not 

thee, 
Thou, whom seen nowhere, 1 feel 

everywhere. 
From heaven and earth, and all that in 

them are. 
Veiled art thou, like a star. 

IV. 

By Heaven and Earth, from all whose 
shapes thou flowest. 
Neither to be contained, delayed, nor 
hidden. 
Making divine the loftiest and the lowest, 
When for a moment thou art not for- 
bidden 
To live within the life which thou be- 
stowest; 
And leaving nolilest things vacant and 
chidden. 
Cold as a corpse after the spirit's flight. 
Blank as the sun after the birth of night. 



In winds, and trees, and streams, and all 
things common, 
In music and the sweet unconscious 
tone 
Of animals, and voices which are human. 
Meant to express some feelings of their 
own; 
In the soft motions and rare smile of 
woman, 
In flowers and leaves, and in the grass 
fresh-shown. 
Or dying in the autumn, I the most 
Adore thee present or lament thee lost. 

VI. 

And thus I went lamenting, when I saw 

A plant upon the river's margin lie. 
Like one who loved beyond his nature's 
law, 
And in despair had cast him down to 
die; 
Its leaves which had outlived the frost, 
the thaw 



Had blighted; like a heart which 

hatred's eye 
Can blast not, but which pity kills; the 

dew 
Lay on its spotted leaves like tears too 

true. 

VII. 

The Heavens had wept upon it, but the 
Earth 
Had crusht it on her unmaternal 
breast. 



VIII. 

I bore it to my chamber, and I planted 

It in a vase full of the lightest mould; 
The winter beams which out of Heaven 
slanted 
Fell thro' the window panes, disrobed 
of cold, 
Upon its leaves and flowers ; the star 
which panted 
In evening for the Day, whose car has 
rolled 
Over the horizon's wave, with looks of 

light 
Smiled on it from the threshold of the 
night. 

IX. 

The mitigated influences of air 

And light revived the plant, and from 
it grew 
Strong leaves and tendrils, and its flow- 
ers fair. 
Full as a cup with the vine's burning 
dew, 
O'erflowed with golden colors; an at- 
mosphere 
Of vital warmth infolded it anew, 
And every impulse sent to every part 
The unbeheld pulsations of its heart. 



Well might the plant grow beautiful and 

strong, 
Even if the air and sun had smiled not 

on it; 
For one wept o'er it all the winter long 



588 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1822. 



Tears pure as Heaven's rain, which 
fell upon it 
Hour after hour; for sounds of softest 
song 
Mixt with the stringed melodies that 
won it 
To leave the gentle lips on which it slept, 
Had loost the heart of him who sat and 
wept. 

XI. 

Had loost his heart, and shook the leaves 
and flowers 
On which he wept, the while the sav- 
age storm 
Waked by the darkest of December's 
hours 
Was raving round the chamber husht 
and warm; 
The birds were shivering in their leafless 
bowers, 
The fish were frozen in the pools, the 
form 
Of every summer plant was dead . . . 
Whilst this . . . 



THE MAGNETIC LADY TO HER 
PATIENT. 

I. 

" Sleep, sleep on ! forget thy pain; 

My hand is on thy brow, 
My spirit on thy brain; 
My pity on thy heart, poor friend; 

And from my fingers flow 
The powers of life, and like a sign, 

Seal thee from thine hour of woe; 
And brood on thee, but may not blend 
With thine. 



" Sleep, sleep on ! I love thee not; 

But when I think that he 
Who made and makes my lot 
As full of flowers as thine of weeds, 

Might have been lost like thee; 
And that a hand which was not mine, 

Might then have charmed his agony 
As I another's — my heart bleeds 
For thine. 



III. 

" Sleep, sleep, and with the slumber of 

The dead and the unborn 
Forget thy life and love; 
Forget that thou must wake forever; 

Forget the world's dull scorn; 
Forget lost health, and the divine 

Feelings which died in youth's brief 
morn; 
And forget me, for I can never 
Be thine. 

IV. 

" Like a cloud big with a May shower, 

My soul weeps healing rain, 
On thee, thou withered flower; 
It breathes mute music on thy sleep; 

Its odor calms thy brain; 
Its light within thy gloomy breast 

Spreads like a second youth again. 
By mine thy being is to its deep 
Possest. 



" The spellisdone. How feel you now? " 
" Better — Quite well," replied 
The sleeper. — " What would do 

You good when suffering and awake? 
What cure your head and side? — " 

" What would cure, that would kill me, 
Jane: 
And as I must on earth abide 

Awhile, yet tempt me not to break 
My chain." 



LINES : 



"WHEN THE 
SHATTERED.' 



LAMP IS 



When the lamp is shattered 
The light in the dust lies dead — 

When the cloud is scattered 
The rainbow's glory is shed. 

When the lute is broken, 
Sweet tones are remembered not; 

When the lips have spoken. 
Loved accents are soon forgot. 



As music and splendor 
Survive not the lamp and the lute. 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1822. 



589 



The heart's echoes render 
No song when the spirit is mute : — 

No song but sad dirges, 
Like the wind through a ruined cell, 

Or the mournful surges 
That ring the dead seaman's knell. 



III. 

When hearts have once mingled 
Love first leaves the well-built nest, 

The weak one is singled 
To endure what it once possest. 

O Love ! who bewailest 
The frailty of all things here. 

Why choose you the frailest 
For your cradle, your home, and your 
bier? 



IV. 

Its passions will rock thee 
As the storms rock the ravens on high : 

Bright reason will mock thee. 
Like the sun from a wintry sky. 

From thy nest every rafter 
Will rot, and thine eagle home 

Leave thee naked to laughter. 
When leaves fall and cold winds come. 



TO JANE: THE INVITATION. 

Best and brightest, come away ! 

Fairer far than this fair Day, 

Which, like thee to those in sorrow. 

Comes to bid a sweet good-morrow 

To the rough Year just awake 

In its cradle on the brake. 

The brightest hour of unborn Spring, 

Thro' the winter wandering. 

Found, it seems, the halcyon Morn 

To hoar February born; 

Bending from Heaven, in azure mirth. 

It kist the forehead of the Earth, 

And smiled upon the silent sea. 

And bade the frozen streams be free. 

And waked to music all their fountains. 

And breathed upon the frozen mountains. 

And like a prophetess of May 

Strewed flowers upon the barren way, 



Making the wintry world appear 
Like one on whom thou smilest, dear. 

Away, away, from men and towns. 

To the wild wood and the downs — 

To the silent wilderness 

Where the soul need not repress 

Its music lest it should not find 

An echo in another's mind. 

While the touch of Nature's art 

Harmonizes heart to heart. 

I leave this notice on my door 

For each accustomed visitor : — 

" I am gone into the fields 

To take what this sweet hour yields; — 

Reflection, you may come to-morrow. 

Sit by the fireside with Sorrow. — 

You with the unpaid bill, Despair, — 

You tiresome verse-reciter. Care, — 

I will pay you in the grave, — 

Death will listen to your stave. 

Expectation too, be off ! 

To-day is for itself enough; 

Hope in pity mock not Woe 

With smiles, nor follow where I go; 

Long having lived on thy sweet food, 

At length I find one moment 's good 

After long pain — with all your love. 

This you never told me of." 

Radiant Sister of the Day, 
Awake ! arise ! and come away ! 
To the wild woods and the plains. 
And the pools where Winter rains 
Image all their roof of leaves. 
Where the pine its garland weaves 
Of sapless green and ivy dun 
Round stems that never kiss the sun; 
Where the lawns and pastures be. 
And the sandhills of the sea; — 
Where the melting hoar-frost wets 
The daisy-star that never sets, 
And wind-flowers, and violets, 
Which yet join not scent to hue. 
Crown the pale year weak and new; 
When the night is left behind 
In the deep east, dun and blind, 
And the blue noon is over us, 
And the multitudinous 
Billows murmur at our feet. 
Where the earth and ocean meet. 
And all things seem only one 
In the universal sun. 



590 



POEMS 'WRITTEN IN 1822. 



rO JANE: THE RECOLLECTION. 



Now the last day of many days, 
All beautiful and bright as thou, 
The loveliest and the last, is dead, 
Rise, Memory, and write its praise ! 
Up to thy wonted work ! come, trace 

The epitaph of glory fled, — 

For now the Earth has changed its face, 

A frown is on the Heaven's brow. 



We wandered to the Pine Forest 

That skirts the Ocean's foam, 
The lightest wind was in its nest. 

The tempest in its home. 
The whispering waves were half asleep, 

The clouds were gone to play, 
And on the bosom of the deep, 

The smile of Heaven lay; 
It seemed as if the hour were one 

Sent from beyond the skies. 
Which scattered from above the sun 

A light of Paradise. 

III. 

We paused amid the pines that stood 

The giants of the waste, 
Tortured by storms to shapes as rude 

As serpents interlaced, 
And soothed by every azure breath, 

That under heaven is blown, 
To harmonies and hues beneath, 

As tender as its own; 
Now all the tree-tops lay asleep, 

Like green waves on the sea, 
As still as in the silent deep 

The ocean woods may be. 



IV. 



How calm it was ! — the silence there 

By such a chain was bound 
That even the busy woodpecker 

Made stiller by her sound 
The inviolable quietness; 

The breath of peace we drew 
With its soft motion made not less 

The calm that round us grew. 



There seemed from the remotest seat 

Of the white mountain waste. 
To the soft flower beneath our feet, 

A magic circle traced, — 
A spirit interfused around, 

A thrilling silent life, 
To momentary peace it bound 

Our mortal nature's strife; — 
And still I felt the centre of 

The magic circle there. 
Was one fair form that filled with love 

The lifeless atmosphere. 



V. 

We paused beside the pools that lie 

Under the forest bough. 
Each seemed as 't were a little sky 

Gulft in a world below; 
A firmament of purple light, 

Which in the dark earth lay. 
More boundless than the depth of night, 

And purer than the day — 
In which the lovely forests grew 

As in the upper air. 
More perfect both in shape and hue 

Than any spreading there. 
There lay the glade and neighboring 
lawn. 

And thro' the dark green wood 
The white sun twinkling like the dawn 

Out of a speckled cloud. 
Sweet views which in our world above 

Can never well be seen. 
Were imaged by the water's love 

Of that fair forest green. 
And all was interfused beneath 

With an elysian glow. 
An atmosphere without a breath, 

A softer day below. 
Like one beloved the scene had lent 

To the dark water's breast, 
Its every leaf and lineament 

With more than truth exprest; 
Until an envious wind crept by, 

Like an unwelcome thought. 
Which from the mind's too faithful eye 

Blots one dear image out. 
Tho' thou art ever fair and kind, 

The forests ever green. 
Less oft is peace in Shelley's mind, 

Than calm in waters seen. 



iiifliii^itmiir*"-"*'*^^^^^""""""^^'™™ 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1822. 



591 



CANCELLED PASSAGE. 

Were not the crocuses that grew 
Under that ilex-tree 

As beautiful in scent and hue 
As ever fed the bee? 



WITH A GUITAR, TO JANE. 

Ariel to Miranda. — Take 

This slave of Music, for the sake 

Of him who is the slave of thee, 

And teach it all the harmony 

In which thou canst, and only thou, 

Make the delighted spirit glow. 

Till joy denies itself again, 

And, too intense, is turned to pain; 

For by permission and command 

Of thine own Prince Ferdinand, 

Poor Ariel sends this silent token 

Of more than ever can be spoken; 

Your guardian spirit, Ariel, who, 

From life to life, must still pursue 

V^our happiness; — for thus alone 

Can Ariel ever find his own. 

From Prospero's enchanted cell, 

As the mighty verses tell. 

To the throne of Naples, he 

Lit you o'er the trackless sea, 

Flitting on, your prow before, 

Like a living meteor. 

When you die, the silent Moon, 

In her interlunar swoon, 

Is not sadder in her cell 

Than deserted Ariel. 

When you live again on earth. 

Like an unseen star of birth, 

Ariel guides you o'er the sea 

Of life from your nativity. 

Many changes have been run, 

Since Ferdinand and you begun 

Your course of love, and Ariel still 

Has trackt your steps, and served your 

will; 
Now, in humbler, happier lot. 
This is all remembered not; 
And now, alas ! the poor sprite is 
Imprisoned, for some fault of his, 
In a body like a grave; — 
From you he only dares to crave, 



For his service and his sorrow, 
A smile to-day, a song to-morrow. 

The artist who this idol wrought. 

To echo all harmonious thought, 

Felled a tree, while on the steep 

The woods were in their winter sleep, 

Rockt in that repose divine 

On the wind-swept Apennine; 

And dreaming, some of Autumn past. 

And some of Spring approaching fast. 

And some of April buds and showers. 

And some of songs in July bowers, 

And all of love; and so this tree, — 

O that such our death may be ! — 

Died in sleep and felt no pain. 

To live in happier form again : 

From which, beneath Heaven's fairest 

star. 
The artist wrought this loved Guitar, 
And taught it justly to reply. 
To all who question skilfully, 
In language gentle as thine own; 
Whispering in enamoured tone 
Sweet oracles of woods and dells, 
And summer winds in sylvan cells; 
For it had learnt all harmonies 
Of the plains and of the skies, 
Of the forests and the mountains. 
And the many-voiced fountains; 
The clearest echoes of the hills, 
The softest notes of falling rills. 
The melodies of birds and bees. 
The murmuring of summer seas, 
And pattering rain, and breathing 

dew, 
And airs of evening; and it knew 
That seldom-heard mysterious sound, 
Which, driven on its diurnal round 
As it floats thro' boundless day. 
Our world enkindles on its way — 
All this it knows, but will not tell 
To those who cannot question well 
The spirit that inhabits it; 
It talks according to the wit 
Of its companions; and no more 
Is heard than has been felt before. 
By those who tempt it to betray 
These secrets of an elder day: 
But sweetly as its answers will 
Flatter hands of perfect skill. 
It keeps its highest, holiest tone 
For our beloved Jane alone. 



592 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1822. 



TO JANE: "THE KEEN STARS 
WERE TWINKLING." 



The keen stars were twinkling, 
And the fair moon was rising among 
them, 
Dear Jane ! 
The guitar was tinkling. 
But the notes were not sweet till you 
sung them 
Again. 

II. 

As the moon's soft splendor 
O'er the faint cold starlight of heaven 
Is thrown. 
So your voice most tender 
To the strings without soul had then 
given 
Its own. 

III. 

The stars will awaken, 
Tho' the moon sleep a full hour later, 
To-night; 
No leaf will be shaken 
Whilst the dews of your melody scatter 
Delight. 

IV. 

Tho' the sound overpowers. 
Sing again, with your dear voice reveal- 
ing 
A tone 
Of some world far from ours. 
Where music and moonlight and feeling 
Are one. 



A DIRGE. 

Rough wind, that moanest loud 

Grief too sad for song; 
Wild wind, when sullen cloud 

Knells all the night long; 
Sad storm, whose tears are vain, 
Bare woods, whose branches stain, 
Deep caves and dreary main, 

Wail, for the world's wrong ! 



LINES WRITTEN IN THE BAY OF 
LERICI. 

She left me at the silent time 

When the moon had ceast to climb 

The azure path of Heaven's steep, 

And like an albatross asleep. 

Balanced on her wings of light, 

Hovered in the purple night, 

Ere she sought her ocean nest 

In the chambers of the West. 

She left me, and I stayed alone 

Thinking over every tone 

Which, tho' silent to the ear. 

The enchanted heart could hear. 

Like notes which die when born, but 

still 
Haunt the echoes of the hill; 
And feeling ever — oh, too much ! — 
The soft vibration of her touch. 
As if her gentle hand, even now, 
Lightly trembled on my brow; 
And thus, altho' she absent were, 
Memory gave me all of her 
That even Fancy dares to claim: — 
Her presence had made weak and tame 
All passions, and I lived alone 
In the time which is our own; 
The past and future were forgot. 
As they had been, and would be, not. 
But soon, the guardian angel gone, 
The demon reassumed his throne 
In my faint heart. I dare not speak 
My thoughts, but thus disturbed and weak 
I sat and saw the vessels glide 
Over the ocean bright and wide. 
Like spirit-winged chariots sent 
O'er some serenest element 
For ministrations strange and far; 
As if to some Elysian star 
Sailed for drink to medicine 
Such sweet and bitter pain as mine. 
And the wind that winged their flight 
From the land came fresh and light. 
And the scent of winged flowers, 
And the coolness of the hours 
Of dew, and sweet warmth left by day, 
Were scattered o'er the twinkling bay. 
And the fisher with his lamp 
And spear about the low rocks damp 
Crept, and struck the fish which came 
To worship the delusive flame. 



NOTE ON POEMS OE 1822. 



593 



Too happy they, whose pleasure sought 
Extinguishes all sense and thought 
Of the regret that pleasure leaves, 
Destroying life alone, not peace ! 

LINES: "WE MEET NOT AS WE 
PARTED." 

I. 

We meet not as we parted, 

We feel more than all may see, 

My bosom is heavy-hearted, 
And thine full of doubt for me. 
One moment has bound the free. 

II. 

That moment is gone forever, 

Like lightning that flasht and died. 

Like a snowflake upon the river. 
Like a sunbeam upon the tide. 
Which the dark shadows hide. 

III. 

That moment from time was singled 
As the first of a life of pain. 

The cup of its joy was mingled 
— Delusion too sweet tho' vain ! 
Too sweet to be mine again. 

IV. 

Sweet lips, could my heart have hidden 
That its life was crusht by you. 

Ye would not have then forbidden 
The death which a heart so true 
Sought in your briny dew. 



V. 



Methinks too little cost 

For a moment so found, so lost ! 

THE ISLE. 

There was a little lawny islet 
By anemone and violet. 

Like mosaic, paven; 



And its roof was flowers and leaves 
Which the summer's breath enweaves 
Where nor sun nor showers nor breeze 
Pierce the pines and tallest trees. 

Each a gem engraven. 
Girt by many an azure wave 
With which the clouds and mountains 
pave 

A lake's blue chasm. 



FRAGMENT: TO THE MOON. 

Bright wanderer, fair coquette of 

heaven, 
To whom alone it has been given 
To change and be adored for ever. 
Envy not this dim world, for never 
But once within its shadows grew 
One fair as 

EPITAPH. 

These are two friends whose lives were 
undivided; 

So let their memory be, now they have 
glided 

Under the grave; let not their bones be 
parted. 

For their two hearts in life were single- 
hearted. 



NOTE ON POEMS OF 1822, B\' 
MRS. SHELLEY. 

This morn thy gallant bark 

Sailed on a sunny sea : 
'T is noon, and tempest dark 

Have wreckt it on the lee. 
Ah woe I ah woe ! 
By Spirits of the deep 

Thou 'rt cradled on the billow 
To thy eternal sleep. 

Thou sleep'st upon the shore 
Beside the knelling surge, 

And Sea-nymphs evermore 
Shall sadly chant thy dirge. 

They come, they come, 

The Spirits of the deep, — 

While near thy seaweed pillow 

My lonely watch I keep. 

From far across the sea 

I hear a loud lament. 
By Echo's voice for thee 

From ocean's caverns sent. 



594 



NOTE ON POEMS OF 1822. 



Oh list ! oh list ! 
The Spirits of the deep ! 

They raise a wail of sorrow, 
While I for ever weep. 

With this last year of the life of Shelley 
these Notes end. They are not what I 
intended them to be. I began with en- 
ergy, and a burning desire to impart to 
the world, in worthy language, the sense 
I have of the virtues and genius of the 
beloved and the lost; my strength has 
failed under the task. Recurrence to the 
past, full of its own deep and unforgot- 
ten joys and sorrows, contrasted with 
succeeding years of painful and solitary 
struggle, has shaken my health. Days 
of great suffering have followed my at- 
tempts to write, and these again pro- 
duced a weakness and languor that spread 
their sinister influence over these Notes. 
I dislike speaking of myself, but cannot 
help apologizing to the dead, and to the 
public, for not having executed in the 
manner I desired the history I engaged 
to give of Shelley's writings.! 

The winter of 1822 was passed in Pisa, 
if we might call that season winter in 
which autumn merged into spring after 
the interval of but few days of bleaker 
weather. Spring sprang up early, and 
with extreme beauty, Shelley had con- 
ceived the idea of writing a tragedy on 
the subject of Charles I. It was one that 
he believed adapted for a drama; full of 
intense interest, contrasted character, and 
busy passion. He had recommended it 
long before, when he encouraged me to 
attempt a play. Whether the subject 
proved more difScult than he anticipated, 
or whether in fact he could not bend his 



* I at one time feared that the correction of 
the press might be less exact through my illness; 
but I believe that it is nearly free from error. 
Some asterisks occur in a few pages, as they did 
in the volume of Posihia}ioi<s Pocvts, either be- 
cause they refer to private concerns, or because 
the original manuscript was left imperfect. Did 
any one see the papers from which I drew that 
volume, the wonder would be how any eyes or 
patience were capable of extractmg it from so 
confused a mass, interlined and broken into 
fragments, so that the sense could only be deci- 
phered and joined by guesses which might seem 
rather intuitive than founded on reasoning. Yet 
I believe no mistake was made. 



mind away from the broodings and wan- 
de;-ings of thought, divested from human 
interest, which he best loved, I cannot 
tell; but he proceeded slowly, and threw 
it aside for one of the most mystical of 
his poems, the "Triumph of Life," on 
which he was employed at the last. 

His passion for boating was fostered at 
this time by having among our friends 
several sailors. His favorite companion, 
Edward Ellerker Williams, of the 8th 
Light Dragoons, had begun his life in the 
navy, and had afterwards entered the 
army; he had spent several years in India, 
and his love for adventure and manly 
exercises accorded with Shelley's taste. 
It was their favorite plan to build a boat 
such as they could manage themselves, 
and, living on the sea-coast, to enjoy at 
every hour and season the pleasure they 
loved best. Captain Roberts, R.N., un- 
dertook to build the boat at Genoa, where 
he was also occupied in building the 
Bolivar for Lord Byron. Ours was to 
be an open boat, on a model taken from 
one of the royal dockyards. I have since 
heard that there was a defect in this 
model, and that it was never seaworthy. 
In the month of February, Shelley and 
his friend went to Spezia to seek for 
houses for us. Only one was to be found 
at all suitable; however, a trifle such as 
not finding a house could not stop Shel- 
ley; the one found was to serve for all. 
It was unfurnished; we sent our furniture 
by sea, and with a good deal of precipi- 
tation, arising from his impatience, made 
our removal. We left Pisa on the 26th 
of April. 

The Bay of Spezia is of considerable 
extent, and divided by a rocky promon- 
tory into a larger and smaller one. The 
town of Lerici is situated on the eastern 
point, and in the depth of the smaller 
bay, which bears the name of this town, 
is the village of San Terenzo. Our house, 
Casa Magni, was close to this village; the 
sea came up to the door, a steep hill shel- 
tered it behind. The proprietor of the 
estate on which it was situated was in- 
sane; he had begun to erect a large house 
at the summit of the hill behind, but his 
malady prevented its being finished, and 



LkilAirtHJmMJUifi*^wiin»iirin^«H*p*»»*«>»«im««i^^ 



NOTE ON POEMS OF 1822. 



595 



it was falling into ruin. He had (and 
this to the Italians had seemed a glaring 
symptom of very decided madness) rooted 
up the olives on the hillside, and pfented 
forest trees. These were mostly young, 
but the plantation was more in English 
taste than I ever elsewhere saw in Italy; 
some fine walnut and ilex trees inter- 
mingled their dark massy foliage, and 
formed groups which still haunt my mem- 
ory, as then they satiated the eye with a 
sense of loveliness. The scene was in- 
deed of unimaginable beauty. The blue 
extent of waters, the almost landlocked 
bay, the near castle of Lerici shutting it 
in to the east, and distant Porto Venere 
to the west; the varied forms of the pre- 
cipitous rocks that bound in the l^each, 
over which there was only a winding 
rugged footpath towards Lerici, and 
none on the other side; the tideless 
sea leaving no sands nor shingle, 
formed a picture such as one sees in 
Salvator Rosa's landscapes only. Some- 
times the sunshine vanished when the 
sirocco raged — the " ponente " the wind 
was called on that shore. The gales and 
squalls that hailed our first arrival sur- 
rounded the bay with foam ; the howl- 
ing wind swept round our exposed house, 
and the sea roared unremittingly, so that 
we almost fancied ourselves on board 
ship. At other times sunshine and calm 
invested sea and sky, and the rich tints 
of Italian heaven bathed the scene in 
bright and ever-varying tints. 

The natives were wilder than the place. 
Our near neighbors of San Terenzo were 
more like savages than any people I ever 
before lived among. Many a night they 
passed on the beach, singing, or rather 
howling; the women dancing about 
among the waves that broke at their feet, 
the men leaning against the rocks and 
joining in their loud wild chorus. We 
could get no provisions nearer than Sar- 
zana, at a distance of three miles and a 
half off, with the torrent of the Magra 
between; and even there the supply was 
very deficient. Had we been wrecked 
on an island of the South Seas, we could 
scarcely have felt ourselves farther from 
civilization and comfort; but, where the 



sun shines the latter becomes an unneces- 
sary luxury, and we had enough society 
among ourselves. Yet I confess house- 
keeping became rather a toilsome task, 
especially as I was suffering in my health, 
and could not exert myself actively. 

At first the fatal boat had not arrived, 
and was expected with great impa- 
tience. On Monday, 12th of May, 
it came. Williams records the long- 
wished-for fact in his journal: "Cloudy 
and threatening weather. M. Maglian 
called; and after dinner, and while walk- 
ing with him on the terrace, we discov- 
ered a strange sail coming round the 
point of Porto Venere, which proved at 
length to be Shelley's boat. She had 
left Genoa on Thursday last, but had 
been driven back by the prevailing bad 
winds. A Mr. Heslop and two English 
seamen brought her round, and they 
speak most highly of her performances. 
She does indeed excite my surprise and 
admiration. Shelley and I walked to 
Lerici, and made a stretch off the land 
to try her : and I find she fetches whatever 
she looks at. In short, we have now a 
perfect plaything for the summer." — 
It was thus that short-sighted mortals 
welcomed Death, he having disguised 
his grim form in a pleasing mask ! The 
time of the friends was now spent on the 
sea; the weather became fine, and our 
whole party often passed the evenings 
on the water when the wind promised 
pleasant sailing. Shelley and Williams 
made 'longer excursions; they sailed sev- 
eral times to Massa. They had engaged 
one of the seamen who brought her 
round, a boy, by name Charles Vivian; 
and they had not the slightest apprehen- 
sion of danger. When the weather was 
unfavorable, they employed themselves 
with alterations in the rigging, and by 
building a boat of canvas and reeds, as 
light as possible, to have on board the 
other for the convenience of landing in 
waters too shallow for the larger vessel. 
When Shelley was on board, he had his 
papers with him; and much of the "Tri- 
umph of Life " was written as he sailed or 
weltered on that sea which was soon to 
engulf him. 



596 



NOTE ON POEMS OF 1822. 



The heats set in in the middle of June; 
the days became excessively hot. But 
the sea-breeze cooled the air at noon, 
and extreme heat always put Shelley in 
spirits. A long drought had preceded 
the heat; and prayers for rain were being 
put up in the churches, and processions 
of relics for the same effect took place in 
every town. At this time we received 
letters announcing the arrival of Leigh 
Hunt at Genoa. Shelley was very eager 
to see him. I was confined to my room 
by severe illness, and could not move; 
it was agreed that Shelley and Williams 
should go to Leghorn in the boat. 
Strange that no fear of danger crossed 
our minds ! Living on the sea-shore, 
the ocean became as a plaything : as a 
child may sport with a lighted stick, till 
a spark inflames a forest, and spreads 
destruction over all, so did we fearlessly 
and blindly tamper with danger, and 
make a game of the terrors of the ocean. 
Our Italian neighbors, even, trusted 
themselves as far as Massa in the skiff; 
and the running down the line of coast 
to Leghorn gave no more notion of peril 
than a fair-weather inland navigation 
would have done to those who had 
never seen the sea. Once, some months 
before, Trelawny had raised a warning 
voice as to the difference of our calm bay 
and the open sea beyond; but Shelley 
and his friends, with their one sailor-boy, 
thought themselves a match for the storms 
of the Mediterranean, in a boat which 
they looked upon as equal to all it was 
put to do. 

On the 1st of July they left us. If 
ever shadow of future ill darkened the 
present hour, such was over my mind 
when they went. During the whole of 
our stay at Lerici, an intense presenti- 
ment of coming evil brooded over my 
mind, and covered this beautiful place 
and genial summer with the shadow of 
coming misery. I had vainly struggled 
with these emotions — they seemed ac- 
counted for by my illness; but at this 
hour of separation they recurred with re- 
newed violence. I did not anticipate 
danger for them, but a vague expectation 
of evil shook me to agony, and I could 



scarcely bring myself to let them go. 
The day was calm and clear; and, a fine 
breeze rising at twelve, they weighed 
for Leghorn. They made the run of 
about fifty miles in seven hours and a 
half. The Bolivar was in port; and, the 
regulations of the Health-office not per- 
mitting them to go on shore after sunset, 
they borrowed cushions from the larger 
vessel, and slept on board their boat. 

They spent a week at Pisa and Leghorn. 
The want of rain was severely felt in the 
country. The weather continued sultry 
and fine. I have heard that Shelley all 
this time was in brilliant spirits. Not 
long before, talking of presentiment, he 
had said the only one that he ever found 
infallible was the certain advent of some 
evil fortune when he felt peculiarly joyous. 
Yet, if ever fate whispered of coming 
disaster, such inaudible but not unfelt 
prognostics hovered around us. The 
beauty of the place seemed unearthly in 
its excess: the distance we were at from 
all signs of civilization, the sea at our feet, 
its murmurs or its roaring forever in our 
ears, — all these things led the mind to 
brood over strange thoughts, and, lifting 
it from everyday life, caused it to be 
familiar with the unreal. A sort of spell 
surrounded us; and each day, as the 
voyagers did not return, we grew restless 
and disquieted, and yet, strange to say, 
we were not fearful of the most apparent 
danger. 

The spell snapped, it was all over; an 
interval of agonizing doubt — of days 
passed in miserable journeys to gain tid- 
ings, of hopes that took firmer root even 
as they were more baseless — was changed 
to the certainty of the death that eclipsed 
all happiness for the survivors for ever- 
more. 

There was something in our fate pecu- 
liarly harrowing. The remains of those 
we lost were cast on shore; but, by the 
quarantine-laws of the coast, we were not 
permitted to have possession of them — 
the law with respect to everything cast on 
land by the sea being that such should be 
burned, to prevent the possibility of any 
remnant bringing the plague into Italy; 
and no representation could alter the law. 



t^lBi«MM««aS>««e.*«*«^«»«*.«««.^>»*^T^»^ 



NOTE ON POEMS OF 1822. 



597 



At length, through the kind and un- 
wearied exertions of Mr. Dawkins, our 
Charge d'Affairesat Florence, we gained 
permission to receive the ashes after the 
bodies were consumed. Nothing could 
equal the zeal of Trelawny in carrying 
our wishes into effect. He was inde- 
fatigable in his exertions, and full of 
forethought and sagacity in his arrange- 
ments. It was a fearful task; he stood 
before us at last, his hands scorched and 
blistered by the flames of the funeral- 
pyre, and by touching the burnt relics as 
he placed them in the receptacles pre- 
pared for the purpose. And there, in 
compass of that small case, was gathered 
all that remained on earth of him whose 
genius and virtue were a crown of glory 
to the world — whose love had been the 
source of happiness, peace, and good, — 
to be buried with him ! 

The concluding stanzas of the " Ado- 
nais " pointed out where the remains 
ought to be deposited; in addition to 
which our beloved child lay buried in 
the cemetery at Rome. Thither Shelley's 
ashes were conveyed; and they rest be- 
neath one of the antique weed-grown 
towers that recur at intervals in the cir- 
cuit of the massy ancient wall of Rome. 
He selected the hallowed place himself; 
there is 

" the sepulchre, 
Oh, not of him, but of our joy ! — 

" And gray walls moulder round, on which dull 
Time 
Feeds, like slow fire upon a hoary brand , 
And one keen pyramid witii wedge sublime, 
Pavilionmg the dust of him who planned 
This refuge for his memory, doth stand 
Like flame transformed to marble ; and beneath 

A field is spread, on which a newer band 
Have pitcht in heaven's smile their camp of 

death, 
Welcoming liim we lose with scarce extm- 
guishl breath." 



Could sorrow for the lost, and shudder- 
ing anguish at the vacancy left behind, 
be soothed by poetic imaginations, there 
was something in Shelley's fate to miti- 



gate pangs which yet, alas ! could not be 
so mitigated; for hard reality brings too 
miserably home to the mourner all that is 
lost of happiness, all of lonely unsolaced 
struggle that remains. Still, though 
dreams and hues of poetry cannot blunt 
grief, it invests his fate with a sublime 
fitness, which those less nearly allied may 
regard with complacency. A year before 
he had poured into verse all such ideas 
about death as give it a glory of its own. 
He had, as it now seems, almost antici- 
pated his own destiny; and, when the 
mind figures his skiff wrapped from sight 
by the thunder-storm, as it was last seen 
upon the purple sea, and then, as the 
cloud of the tempest passed away, no 
sign remained of where it had been ^ — 
who but will regard as a prophecy the 
last stanza of the " Adonais " ? 

"The breath whose might I have invoked in 
song 
Descends on me , my spirit's bark is driven 
Far from the shore, far from the trembUng 
throng 
Whose sails were never to the tempest given ; 
The massy earth and sjihered skies are riven ! 
I am borne darkly, fearfully, afar! 

Whilst, burning thro' the inmost veil of 
heaven, 
The soul of Adonais, like a star. 
Beacons from tlie abode where the Eternal are." 
Putney, May i, 1839. 



1 Captain Roberts watched the vessel with his 
glass from the top of the lighthouse of Leghorn, 
on Its homeward track. They were off Via 
Reggio, at some distance from shore, when a 
storm was driven over the sea. It enveloped 
them and several larger vessels in darkness. 
When the cloud passed onwards, Roberts looked 
again, and saw every other vessel sailing on the 
ocean except their little scliooner, which had 
vanished From that time he could scarcely 
doubt the fatal truth ; yet we fancied that they 
might have been driven towards Elba or Corsica, 
and so be saved. The obser\'ation made as to 
tiie spot where the boat disappeared caused it 
to be found, through the exertions of Trelawny for 
that effect It had gone down in ten fathom 
water, it had not capsized, and, except such 
things as had floated from her, everything was 
found on board exactly as it had been placed 
when they sailed. The boat itself was unin- 
jured. Roberts possessed himself of her, and 
decked her; but she proved not seaworthy, and 
her shattered planks now lie rotting on the shore 
of one of the Ionian islands, on which she was 
wrecked. 



598 



TRANS LA TIONS. 



TRANSLATIONS. 
HYMN TO MERCURY. 

TRANSLATED FROM THE GREEK OF 
HOMER. 



SiNG» Muse, the son of Maia and of 
Jove, 
The Herald-child, king of Arcadia 
And all its pastoral hills, whom in sweet 
love 
Having been interwoven, modest May 
Bore Heaven's dread Supreme — an an- 
tique grove 
Shadowed the cavern where the lovers 
lay 
In the deep night, unseen by Gods or 

Men, 
And white-armed Juno slumbered sweet- 
ly then. 

n. 

Now, when the joy of Jove had its ful- 
filling. 
And Heaven's tenth moon chronicled 
her relief. 
She gave to light a babe all babes excel- 
ling, 
A schemer subtle beyond all belief ; 
A shepherd of thin dreams, a cow-steal- 

ing> 
A night-watching, and door-waylaying 

thief. 
Who 'mongst the Gods was soon about 

to thieve. 
And other glorious actions to achieve. 

in. 

The babe was born at the first peep of 
day; 
He began playing on the lyre at noon. 
And the same evening did he steal away 
Apollo's herds; — the fourth day of 
the moon 
On which him bore the venerable May, 
From her immortal limbs he leapt 
full soon, 
Nor long could in the sacred cradle keep, 
But out to seek Apollo's herds would 
creep. 



IV. 

Out of the lofty cavern wandering 

He found a tortoise, and cried out—' 
"A treasure ! " 
(For Mercury first made the tortoise 
sing) 
The beast before the portal at his 
leisure 
The flowery herbage was depasturing. 

Moving his feet in a deliberate measure 
Over the turf. Jove's profitable son 
Eyeing him laught, and laughing thus 
begun: — 

V. 

"A useful god-send are you to me now, 
King of the dance, companion of the 

feast. 
Lovely in all your nature ! Welcome, 

you 
Excellent plaything ! Where, sweet 

mountain beast, 
Got you that speckled shell? Thus 

much I know. 
You must come home with me and be 

my guest; 
You will give joy to me, and I will do 
All that is in my power to honor you. 



VI. 



* * Better to be at home than out of door ; — 
So come with me, and tho' it has been 
said 
That you alive defend from magic power, 
I know you will sing sweetly when 
you 're dead." 
Thus having spoken, the quaint infant 
bore, 
Lifting it from the grass on which it 
fed. 
And grasping it in his delighted hold. 
His treasured prize into the cavern old. 

VII. 

Then scooping with a chisel of gray steel. 
He bored the life and soul out of the 
beast — 
Not swifter a swift thought of woe or 
weal 
Darts thro' the tumult of a human 
breast 



HOMER'S HYMN TO MERCURY. 



590 



Which thronging cares annoy — not 
swifter wheel 
The flashes of its torture and unrest 
Out of the dizzy eyes — than Maia's son 
All that he did devise hath featly done. 

VIII. 

And thro' the tortoise's hard stony 
skin 
At proper distances small holes he made, 
And fastened the cut stems of reeds 
within, 
And with a piece of leather overlaid 

The open space and fixt the cubits in, 
Fitting the bridge to both, and stretcht 

o'er all 
Symphonious cords of sheep-gut rhyth- 
mical. 

IX. 
When he had wrought the lovely instru- 
ment, 
He tried the chords, and made division 
meet 
Preluding with the plectrum, and there 
went 
Up from beneath his hand a tumult 
sweet 
Of mighty sounds, and from his lips he 
sent 
A strain of unpremeditated wit 
Joyous and wild and wanton — such you 

may 
Hear among revellers on a holiday. 



He sung how Jove and May of the bright 
sandal 
Dallied in love not quite legitimate; 
And his own birth, still scofhng at the 
scandal. 
And naming his own name, did cele- 
brate; 
His mother's cave and servant maids he 
planned all 
In plastic verse, her household stuff 
and state, 
Perennial pot, trippet, and brazen pan, — 
But singing, he conceived another plan. 

XI. 

Seized with a sudden fancy for fresh 
meat. 



He in his sacred crib deposited 

The hollow lyre, and from the cavern 
sweet 
Rusht with great leaps up to the moun- 
tain's head. 
Revolving in his mind some subtle feat 
Of thievish craft, such as a swindler 

might 
Devise in the lone season of dun night. 

XII. 

Lo ! the great Sun under the ocean's 
bed has 
Driven steeds and chariot — The child 
meanwhile strode 
O'er the Pierian mountains clothed in 
shadows. 
Where the immortal oxen of the God 
Are pastured in the flowering unmown 
meadows. 
And safely stalled in a remote abode — 
The archer Argicide, elate and proud. 
Drove fifty from the herd, lowing aloud. 

XIII. 

He drove them wandering o'er the sandy 
way. 
But, being ever mindful of his craft. 
Backward and forward drove he them 
astray. 
So that the tracks which seemed be- 
fore, were aft; 
His sandals then he threw to the ocean 
spray. 
And for each foot he wrought a kind 
of raft 
Of tamarisk, and tamarisk-like sprigs. 
And bound them in a lump with withy 
twigs. 

XIV. 

And on his feet he tied these sandals 
light, 
The trail of whose wide leaves might not 
betray 
His track; and then, a self-sufficing 
wight. 
Like a man hastening on some distant 
way. 
He from Pieria's mountain bent his 
flight; 
But an old man perceived the infant pass 
Down green Onchestus heapt like beds 
with grass. 



6oo 



TRANS LA TIONS. 



XV. 

The old man stood dressing 'his sunny 
vine : 
" Halloo ! old fellow with the crooked 
shoulder ! 
You grub those stumps? before they will 
bear wine 
Methinks even you must grow a little 
older : 
Attend, I pray, to this advice of mine, 
As you would 'scape what might appal 
a bolder — 
Seeing, see not — and hearing, hear not 

— and — 
If you have understanding — understand. ' ' 

XVI. 

So saying, Hermes roused the oxen vast; 
O'er shadowy mountain and resounding 
dell, 
And flower-paven plains, great Hermes 
past; 
Till the black night divine, which fav- 
oring fell 
Around his steps, grew gray, and morn- 
ing fast 
Wakened the world to work, and from 
her cell 
Sea-strewn, the Pallantean Moon sub- 
lime 
Into her watch-tower just began to climb. 

XVII. 

Now to Alpheus he had driven all 

The broad-foreheaded oxen of the 
Sun; 
They came unwearied to the lofty stall 
And to the water troughs which ever 
run 
Thro' the fresh fields — and when with 
rushgrass tall, 
Lotus and all sweet herbage, every 
one 
Had pastured been, the great God made 

them move 
Towards the stall in a collected drove. 

XVIII. 

A mighty pile of wood the God then 
heapt, 



And having soon conceived the mys- 
tery 
Of fire, from two smooth laurel branches 
stript 
The bark, and rubbed them in his 
palms, — on high 
Suddenly forth the burning vapor leapt. 
And the divine child saw delightedly — 
Mercury first found out for human weal 
Tinder-box, matches, fire-irons, flint and 
steel. 

XIX. 

And fine dry logs and roots innumerous 
He gathered in a delve upon the 
ground — 
And kindled them — and instantaneous 
The strength of the fierce flame was 
breathed around: 
And whilst the might of glorious Vulcan 
thus 
Wrapt the great pile with glare and 
roaring sound, 
Hermes dragged forth two heifers, low- 
ing loud. 
Close to the fire — such might was in the 
God. 

XX. 

And on the earth upon their backs he 

threw 
The panting beasts, and rolled them 

o'er and o'er. 
And bored their lives out. Without 

more ado 
He cut up fat and flesh, and down be- 
fore 
The fire, on spits of wood he placed the 

two. 
Toasting their flesh and ribs, and all 

the gore 
Purst in the bowels; and while this was 

done 
He stretcht their hides over a craggy 

stone. 

XVI. 

We mortals let an ox grow old, and then 
Cut it up after long consideration, — 

But joyous-minded Hermes from the glen 
Drew the fat spoils to the more open 
station 



HOMER'S HYMN TO MERCURY. 



60 1 



Of a flat smooth space, and portioned 

them; and when 
He had by lot assigned to each a 

ration 
Of the twelve Gods, his mind became 

aware 
Of all the joys which in religion are. 

XXII. 

For the sweet savor of the roasted meat 
Tempted him tho' immortal. Natheles 
He checkt his haughty will and did not 
eat, 
Tho' what it cost him words can 
scarce express. 
And every wish to put such morsels 
sweet 
Down his most sacred throat, he did 
repress; 
But soon within the lofty portalled stall 
He placed the fat and flesh and bones 
and all. 

XXIII. 

And every trace of the fresh butchery 
And cooking, the God soon made dis- 
appear, 
As if it all had vanisht thro' the sky; 
He burned the hoofs and horns and 
head and hair, 
The insatiate fire devoured them hun- 
grily;— 
And when he saw that everything was . 
clear, 
He quencht the coals, and trampled the 

black dust, 
And in the stream his bloody sandals 
tost. 

XXIV. 

All night he workt in the serene moon- 
shine — 
But when the light of day was spread 
abroad 
He sought his natal mountain-peaks 
divine. 
On his long wandering, neither man 
nor god 
Had met him, since he killed Apollo's 
kine. 
Nor house-dog had barkt at him on his 
road; 



Now he obliquely thro' the keyhole past, 
Like a thin mist, or an autumnal blast. 

XXV. 

Right thro' the temple of the spacious cave 
He went with soft light feet — as if his 
tread 
Fell not on earth; no sound their falling 
gave; 
Then to his cradle he crept quick, and 
spread 
The swaddling-clothes about him; and 
the knave 
Lay playing with the covering of the 
bed 
With his left hand about his knees — the 

right 
Held his beloved tortoise-lyre tight. 

XXVI. 

There he lay, innocent as a new-born 
child. 
As gossips say; but tho' he was a god. 
The goddess, his fair mother, unbeguiled 
Knew all that he had done being 
abroad : 
"Whence come you, and from what 
adventure wild. 
You cunning rogue, and where have 
you abode 
All the long night, clothed in your im- 
pudence? 
What have you done since you departed 
hence ? 

XXVII. 

" Apollo soon will pass within this gate 

And bind your tender body in a chain 
Inextricably tight, and fast as fate, 

Unless you can delude the God again. 
Even when within his arms — ah, runa- 
gate ! 
A pretty torment both for gods and men 
Your father made when he made you ! " 

— " Dear mother," 
Replied sly Hermes, " Wherefore scold 
and bother? 

XXVIII. 

" As if I were like other babes as old, 
And understood nothing of what is 
what; 



602 



TRANSLA TIONS. 



And cared at all to hear my mother 

scold. 
I in my subtle brain a scheme have 

got, 
Which whilst the sacred stars round 

Heaven are rolled 
Will profit you and me — nor shall our 

lot 
Be as you counsel, without gifts or food, 
To spend our lives in this obscure abode. 

XXIX. 

'* But we will leave this shadow-peopled 
cave 
And live among the Gods, and pass 
each day 
In high communion, sharing what they 
have 
Of profuse wealth and unexhausted 
prey; 
And from the portion which my father 
gave 
To Phcebus, I will snatch my share 
away, 
Which if my father will not — natheless 

I, 

Who am the king of robbers, can but try. 

XXX. 

*' And, if Latona's son should find me 

out, 
I'll countermine him by a deeper plan; 
I'll pierce the Pythian temple-walls, tho' 

stout. 
And sack the fane of every thing I 

can — 
Caldrons and tripods of great worth no 

doubt. 
Each golden cup and polisht brazen 

pan, 
All the wrought tapestries and garments 

gay." — 
So they together talkt; — meanwhile the 

Day, 

XXXI. 

Ethereal born, arose out of the flood 
Of flowing Ocean, bearing light to 
men. 
Apollo past toward the sacred wood, 
Which from the inmost depths of its 
green glen 



Echoes the voice of Neptune, — and 

there stood 
On the same spot in green Onchestus 

then 
That same old animal, the vine-dresser. 
Who was employed hedging his vineyard 

there. 

XXXII. 

Latona's glorious Son began : — "I pray 
Tell, ancient hedger of Onchestus 
green, 
Whether a drove of kine has past this 
way, 
All heifers with crookt horns? for they 
have been 
Stolen from the herd in high Pieria, 
Where a black bull was fed apart, be- 
tween 
Two woody mountains in a neighboring 

glen. 
And four fierce dogs watcht there, unani- 
mous as men. 

XXXIII. 

" And what is strange, the author of this 

theft 
Has stolen the fatted heifers, every 

one, 
But the four dogs and the black bull are 

left: — 
Stolen they were last night at set of 

sun, 
Of their soft beds and their sweet food 

bereft — 
Now tell me, man born ere the world 

begun, 
Have you seen any one pass with the 

cows? " — 
To whom the man of overhanging brows : 

XXXIV. 

" My friend, it would require no common 
skill 
Justly to speak of everything I see: 
On various purposes of good or ill 

Many pass by my vineyard, — and to 
me 
'T is difficult to know the invisible 
Thoughts, which in all those many 
minds may be: — 
Thus much alone I certainly can say, 
I tilled these vines till the decline of day, 



"T! 



HOMER'S HYMN TO MERCURY. 



603 



XXXV. 

*' And then I thought I saw, but dare not 
speak 
With certainty of such a wondrous 
thing, 
A child, who could not have been born 
a week, 
Those fair-horned cattle closely follow- 
ing, 
And in his hand he held a polisht stick : 
And, as on purpose, he walkt waver- 
ing 
From one side to the other of the road, 
And with his face opposed the steps he 
trod." 

XXXVI. 

Apollo hearing this, past quickly on — 
No winged omen could have shown 
more clear 
That the deceiver was his father's son. 

So the God wraps a purple atmosphere 

Around his shoulders, and like fire is 

gone 

To famous Pylos, seeking his kine 

there, 

And found their track and his, yet hardly 

cold, 
And cried — "What wonder do mine 
eyes behold ! 

XXXVII. 

** Here are the footsteps of the horned 
herd 
Turned back towards their fields of 
asphodel ; — 
But these ! are not the tracks of beast or 
bird. 
Gray wolf, or bear, or lion of the dell. 
Or maned Centaur — sand was never 
stirred 
By man or woman thus ! Inexplicable! 
Who with unwearied feet could e'er im- 
press 
The sand with such enormous vestiges? 



XXXVIII. 

** That was most strange — but this is 
stranger still ! ' ' 
Thus having said, Phoebus impetuously 



Sought high Cyllene's forest-cinctured 
hill, 
And the deep cavern where dark shad- 
ows lie, 

And where the ambrosial nymph with 
happy will 
Bore the Saturnian's love-child. Mer- 
cury — 

And a delightful odor from the dew 

Of the hill pastures, at his coming, flew. 

XXXIX. 

And Phoebus stoopt under the craggy 
roof 
Archt over the dark cavern: — Maia's 
child 
Perceived that he came angry, far aloof, 
About the cows of which he had been 
beguiled. 
And over him the fine and fragrant woof 
Of his ambrosial swaddling clothes he 
piled — 
As among fire - brands lies a burning 

spark 
Covered, beneath the ashes cold and 
dark. 

XL. 

There, like an infant who had suckt his 
fill 
And now was newly washt and put to 
bed. 
Awake, but courting sleep with weary 
will. 
And gathered in a lump, hands, feet, 
and head, 
He lay, and his beloved tortoise still 
He graspt and held under his shoul- 
der-blade. 
Phoebus the lovely mountain - goddess 

knew. 
Not less her subtle, swindling baby, who 

XLI. 

Lay swathed in his sly wiles. Round 
every crook 
Of the ample cavern, for his kine, 
Apollo 
Lookt sharp; and when he saw them not, 
he took 
The glittering key, and opened three 
great hollow 



6o4 



TRANSLA TIONS. 



Recesses in the rock — where many a 
nook 
Was filled with the sweet food im- 
mortals swallow, 
And mighty heaps of silver and of gold 
Were piled within — a wonder to behold ! 

XLII. 

And white and silver robes, all over- 
wrought 
With cunning workmanship of tracery 
sweet — 
Except among the Gods there can be 
naught 
In the wide world to be compared 
with it. 
Latona's offspring, after having sought 
His herds in every corner, thus did 
greet 
Great Hermes: — " Little cradled rogue, 

declare 
Of my illustrious heifers, where they are ! 

XLIII. 

"Speak quickly! or a quarrel between 
us 
Must rise, and the event will be, that I 
Shall hurl you into dismal Tartarus, 
In fiery gloom to dwell eternally; 
Nor shall your father nor your mother 
loose 
The bars of that black dungeon — 
utterly 
You shall be cast out from the light of 

day. 
To rule the ghosts of men, unblest as 
they." 

XLIV. 

To whom thus Hermes slily answered: 
— "Son 
Of great Latona, what a speech is 
this! 
Why come you here to ask me what is 
done 
With the wild oxen which it seems 
you miss? 
I have not seen them, nor from any one 
Have heard a word of the whole 
business: 



If you should promise an immense re- 
ward, 

I could not tell more than you now have 
heard. 

XLV. 

"An ox-stealer should be both tall and 

strong. 
And I am but a little new-born thing. 
Who, yet at least, can think of nothing 

wrong : — 
My business is to suck, and sleep, 

and fling 
The cradle-clothes about me all day 

long, — 
Or half asleep, hear my sweet mother 

sing. 
And to be washt in water clean and 

warm, 
And husht and kist and kept secure from 

harm. 

XLVI. 

" O, let not e'er this quarrel be averred ! 
The astounded Gods would laugh at 
you, if e'er 
You should allege a story so absurd, 
As that a new-born infant forth could 
fare 
Out of his home after a savage herd. 
I was born yesterday — my small feet 
are 
Too tender for the roads so hard and 

rough : — 
And if you think that this is not enough, 

XLVII. 

" I swear a great oath, by my father's 

head, 
That I stole not your cows, and that I 

know 
Of no one else who might, or could, or 

did. — 
Whatever things cows are, I do not 

know, 
For I have only heard the name." — 

This said, 
He winkt as fast as could be, and his 

brow 
Was wrinkled, and a whistle loud gave 

he. 
Like one who hears some strange ab' 

surdity. 



HOMER'S HYMN TO MERCURY. 



605 



XLVIII. 



"Aye, 



Apollo gently smiled and said 
aye,— 
You cunning little rascal, you will 
bore 
Many a rich man's house, and your array 
Of thieves will lay their siege before 
his door, 
Silent as night, in night; and many a 
day 
In the wild glens rough shepherds 
will deplore 
That you or yours, having an appetite, 
Met with their cattle, comrade of the 
night ! 

XLIX. 

*' And this among the Gods shall be your 
gift, 
To be considered as the lord of those 
Who swindle, house-break, sheep-steal, 
and shop-lift; — 
But now, if you would not your last 
sleep doze; 
Crawl out ! " — Thus saying, Phoebus did 
uplift 
The subtle infant in his swaddling- 
clothes, 
And in his arms, according to his wont, 
A scheme devised the illustrious Argi- 
phont. 

L. 



And sneezed and shuddered — Phoebus 
on the grass 
Him threw, and whilst all that he had 
designed 
He did perform — eager altho' to pass, 
Apollo darted from his mighty mind 
Towards the subtle babe the following 

scoff : — 
*' Do not imagine this will get you off, 

LI. 

*' You little swaddled child of Jove and 

May! " 
And seized him: — "By this omen I 

shall trace 
My noble herds, and you shall lead the 

way." — 



Cyllenian Hermes from the grassy 
place, 
Like one in earnest haste to get away, 
Rose, and with hands lifted towards 
his face 
Round both his ears — up from his shoul- 
ders drew 
His swaddling clothes, and — "What 
mean you to do 

LII. 

" With me, you unkind God? " said 
Mercury: 
" Is it about these cows you tease me 
so? 
I wish the race of cows were perisht ! I 
Stole not your cows — I do not even 
know 
What things cows are. Alas ! I well 
may sigh, 
That since I came into this world of 
woe, 
I should have ever heard the name of 

one — 
But I appeal to the Saturnian's throne." 

LIII. 

Thus Phcebus and the vagrant Mercury 
Talkt without coming to an explana- 
tion. 
With adverse purpose. As for Phoebus, 
he 
Sought not revenge, but only informa- 
tion. 
And Hermes tried with lies and roguery 
To cheat Apollo. — But when no 
evasion 
Served — for the cunning one his match 

had found — 
He paced on first over the sandy ground. 

LIV. 

He of the Silver Bow the child of Jove 
Followed behind, till to their heavenly 
Sire 
Came both his children — beautiful as 
Love, 
And from his equal balance did require 
A judgment in the cause wherein they 
strove. 
O'er odorous Olympus and its snows 



6o6 



TRANS LA TIO/VS, 



A murmuring tumult as they came 
arose, — 

LV. 

And from the folded depths of the great 
Hill, 
While Hermes and Apollo reverent 
stood 
Before Jove's throne, the indestructible 
Immortals rusht in mighty multitude; 
And whilst their seats in order due they 
fill, 
The lofty Thunderer in a careless 
mood 
To Phoebus said: — " Whence drive you 

this sweet prey. 
This herald-baby, born but yesterday? — 

LVI. 

** A most important subject, trifler, this 
To lay before the Gods ! " — " Nay, 
father, nay. 

When you have understood the business, 
Say not that I alone am fond of prey. 

I found this little boy in a recess 

Under Cyllene's mountains far away — 

A manifest and most apparent thief, 

A scandal-monger beyond all belief. 

LVII. 

" I never saw his like either in heaven 

Or upon earth for knavery or craft : — 
Out of the field my cattle yester-even, 
By the low shore on which the loud 
sea laught, 
He right down to the river-ford had 
driven; 
And mere astonishment would make 
you daft 
To see the double kind of footsteps 

strange 
He has imprest wherever he did range. 

LVIII. 

**The cattle's track on the black dust, 
full well 
Is evident, as if they went towards 
The place from which they came — that 
asphodel 
Meadow, in which I feed my many 
herds, — 
His steps were most incomprehensible — 



I know not how I can describe in 
words 
Those tracks — he could have gone along 

the sands 
Neither upon his feet nor on his hands; — 



LIX. 

" He must have had some other stranger 
mode 
Of moving on : those vestiges immense. 
Far as I traced them on the sandy road. 
Seemed like the trail of oak-toppings: 
— but thence 
No mark nor track denoting where they 
trod 
The hard ground gave: — but, working 
at his fence, 
A mortal hedger saw him as he past 
To Pylos, with the cows, in fiery haste. 



LX. 

" I found that in the dark he quietly 
Had sacrificed some cows, and before 
light 
Had thrown the ashes all dispersedly 
About the road — then, still as gloomy 
night. 
Had crept into his cradle, either eye 
Rubbing, and cogitating some new 
sleight. 
No eagle could have seen him as he lay 
Hid in his cavern from the peering day. 



LXI. 

** I taxt him with the fact, when he 
averred 
Most solemnly that he did neither see 
Nor even had in any manner heard 
Of my lost cows, whatever things cows 
be; 
Nor could he tell, tho' offered a reward. 
Not even who could tell of them to 
me." 
So speaking, Phoebus sate; and Hermes 

then 
Addrest the Supreme Lord of Gods and 



HOMER'S HYMN TO MERCURY. 



607 



LXII. 

" Great Father, you know clearly before- 
hand 
That all which I shall say to you is 
sooth; 
I am a most veracious person, and 

Totally unacquainted with untruth. 
At sunrise, Phoebus came, but with no 
band 
Of Gods to bear him witness, in great 
wrath. 
To my abode, seeking his heifers there. 
And saying that 1 must show him where 
they are, 

LXIII. 

•* Or he would hurl me down the dark 
abyss. 
I know that every Apollonian limb 
Is clothed with speed and might and 
manliness, 
As a green bank with flowers — but 
unlike him 
I was born yesterday, and you may guess 
He well knew this when he indulged 
the whim 
Of bullying a poor little new-born thing 
That slept, and never thought of cow- 
driving. 

LXIV. 

*' Am I like a strong fellow who steals 
kine? 
Believe me, dearest Father, such you 
are. 
This driving of the herds is none of mine ; 
Across my threshold did I wander ne'er, 
So may I thrive ! I reverence the divine 
Sun and the Gods, and I love you, and 
care 
Even for this hard accuser — who must 

know 
I am as innocent as they or you. 

LXV. 

" I swear by these most gloriously- 
wrought portals — 
(It is, you will allow, an oath of might) 
Thro' which the multitude of the Im- 
mortals 
Pass and repass for ever, day and night, 



Devising schemes for the affairs erf 

mortals — 

That I am guiltless; and I will requite, 

Altho' mine enemy be great and strong. 

His cruel threat — do thou defend the 



young 



LXVI. 



So speaking, the Cyllenian Argiphont 
Winkt, as if now his adversary was 
fitted: — 
And Jupiter according to his wont, 

Laught heartily to hear the subtle- 
witted 
Infant give such a plausible account, 

And every word a lie. But he remitted 
Judgment at present — and his exhorta- 
tion 
Was, to compose the affair by arbitration. 

LXVII. 

And they by mighty Jupiter were bidden 
To go forth with a single purpose both. 
Neither the other chiding nor yet chid- 
den : 
And Mercury with innocence and truth 
To lead the way, and show where he had 
hidden 
The mighty heifers. — Hermes, nothing 
loth, 
Obeyed the yEgis-bearer's will — for he 
Is able to persuade all easily. 

LXVIII. 

These lovely children of Heaven's high- 
est Lord 
Hastened to Pylos and the pastures 
wide 
And lofty stalls by the Alphean ford. 
Where wealth in the mute night is 
multiplied 
With silent growth. Whilst Hermes 
drove the herd 
Out of the stony cavern, Phoebus spied 
The hides of those the little babe had 

slain, 
Stretcht on the precipice above the plain. 

LXIX. 

"How was it possible," then Phoebus 
said, 



6o8 



TRANS LA TIOMS. 



"That you, a little child, born yester- 
day, 
A thing on mother's milk and kisses fed. 
Could two prodigious heifers ever flay ! 
Even I myself may well hereafter dread 
Your prowess, offspring of Cyllenian 
May, 
When you grow strong and tall." — He 

spoke, and bound 
Stiff withy bands the infant's wrists 
around. 

LXX. 

He might as well have bound the oxen 
wild; 
The withy bands, though starkly in- 
terknit. 
Fell at the feet of the immortal child, 
Loosened by some device of his quick 
wit. 
Phoebus perceived himself again beguiled. 
And stared — while Hermes sought 
some hole or pit. 
Looking askance and winking fast as 

thought. 
Where he might hide himself and not be 
caught. 

LXXI. 

Sudden he changed his plan, and with 
strange skill 
Subdued the strong Latonian, by the 
might 
Of winning music, to his mightier will; 
His left hand held the lyre, and in his 
right 
The plectrum struck the chords — uncon- 
querable 
Up from beneath his hand in circling 
flight 
The gathering music rose — and sweet as 

Love 
The penetrating notes did live and move 

LXXII. 

Within the heart of great Apollo. — He 
Listened with all his soul, and laught 
for pleasure. 
Close to his side stood harping fearlessly 
The unabashed boy; and to the 
measure 
Of the sweet lyre, there followed loud 
and free 



His joyous voice; for he unlockt the 

treasure 
Of his deep song, illustrating the birth 
Of the bright Gods, and the dark desert 

Earth : 

LXXIII. 

And how to the Immortals every one 
A portion was assigned of all that is; 

But chief Mnemosyne did Maia's son 
Clothe in the light of his loud melo- 
dies; — 

And as each God was born or had begun 
He in their order due and fit degrees 

Sung of his birth and being — and did 
move 

Apollo to unutterable love. 

LXXIV. 

These words were winged with his swift 

delight : 
"You heifer-stealing schemer, well do 

you 
Deserve that fifty oxen should requite 
Such minstrelsies as I have heard even 

now. 
Comrade of feasts, little contriving wight, 
One of your secrets I would gladly 

know. 
Whether the glorious power you now 

show forth 
Was folded up within you at your birth, 

LXXV. 

"Or whether mortal taught or God in- 
spired 
The power of unpremeditated song? 
Many divinest sounds have I admired. 
The Olympian Gods and mortal men 
among; 
But such a strain of wondrous, strange, 
untired, 
And soul-awakening music, sweet and 
strong, 
Yet did I never hear except from thee, 
Offspring of May, impostor Mercury ! 

LXXVI. 

"What Muse, what skill, what unim- 
agined use. 
What exercise of subtlest art, has given 



HOMER'S HYMN TO MERCURY. 



609 



Thy songs such power? — for those who 

hear may choose 
From three, the choicest of the gifts 

of Heaven, 
Delight, and love, and sleep, — sweet 

sleep, whose dews 
Are sweeter than the balmy tears of 

even : — 
And I, who speak this praise, am that 

Apollo 
Whom the Olympian Muses ever follow: 

LXXVII. 

"And their delight is dance and the 
blithe noise 
Of song and overflowing poesy; 
And sweet, even as desire, the liquid 
voice 
Of pipes, that fills the clear air thrill- 
ingly; 
But never did my inmost soul rejoice 

In this dear work of youthful revelry 
As now. I wonder at thee, son of Jove; 
Thy harpings and thy song are soft as 
love. 

LXXVIII. 

"Now since thou hast, altho' so very 

small, 
Science of arts so glorious, thus I 

swear. 
And let this cornel javelin, keen and 

tall. 
Witness between us what I promise 

here, — 
That I will lead thee to the Olympian 

Hall, 
Honored and mighty, with thy mother 

dear, 
And many glorious gifts in joy will give 

thee, 
And even at the end will ne'er deceive 

thee." 

LXXIX. 

To whom thus Mercury with prudent 
speech : — 
"Wisely hast thou inquired of my 
skill: 
I envy thee no thing I know to teach 
Even this day : — for both in word and 
will 



I would be gentle with thee; thou canst 

reach 
All things in thy wise spirit, and thy 

sill 
Is highest in heaven among the sons of 

Jove, 
Who loves thee in the fulness of his love. 

LXXX. 

"The Counsellor Supreme has given to 
thee 
Divinest gifts, out of the amplitude 
Of his profuse exhaustless treasury; 
By thee, 't is said, the depths are un- 
derstood 
Of his far voice; by thee the mystery 
Of all oracular fates, — and the dread 
mood 
Of the diviner is breathed up, even I — 
A child — perceive thy might and ma- 
jesty — 

LXXXI. 

" Thou canst seek out and compass all 
that wit 
Can find or teach; — yet since thou 
wilt, come take 
The lyre — be mine the glory giving it — 
Strike the sweet chords, and sing 
aloud, and wake 
Thy joyous pleasure out of many a fit 
Of tranced sound — and with fleet fin- 
gers make 
Thy liquid-voiced comrade talk with 

thee, — 
It can talk measured music eloquently. 

LXXXII. 

" Then bear it boldly to the revel loud. 
Love-wakening dance, or feast of 
solemn state, 
A joy by night or day — for those en- 
dowed 
With art and wisdom who interrogate 
It teaches, babbling in delightful mood 
All things which make the spirit most 
elate, 
Soothing the mind with sweet familiar 

play. 
Chasing the heavy shadows of dismay. 



TRANSLA rWNS. 



LXXXIII. 

*'To those who are unskilled in its sweet 
tongue, 
Tho' they should question most impet- 
uously 
Its hidden soul, it gossips something 
wrong — 
Some senseless and impertinent reply. 
But thou who art as wise as thou art 
strong 
Canst compass all that thou desirest. I 
Present thee with this music-flowing shell, 
Knowing thou canst interrogate it well. 

LXXXIV. 

*' And let us two henceforth together 
feed 
On this green mountain slope and pas- 
toral plain. 
The herds in litigation — they will breed 
Quickly enough to recompense our 
pain, 
If to the bulls and cows we take good 
heed; — 
And thou, tho' somewhat over fond of 
gain. 
Grudge me not half the profit." — Hav- 
ing spoke, 
The shell he proffered, and Apollo took. 

LXXXV. 

And gave him in return the glittering 
lash, 
Installing him as herdsman; — from 
the look 
Of Mercury then laught a joyous flash. 
And then Apollo with the plectrum 
strook 
The chords, and from beneath his hands 
a crash 
Of mighty sounds rusht up, whose 
music shook 
The soul with sweetness, and like an 

adept 
His sweeter voice a just accordance kept. 

LXXXVI. 

The herd went wandering o'er the divine 
mead, 
Whilst these most beautiful Sons of 
Jupiter 



Won their swift way up to the snowy 

head 
Of white Olympus, with the joyous 

lyre 
Soothing their journey; and their father 

dread 
Gathered them both into familiar 
Affection sweet, — and then, and now, 

and ever, 
Hermes must love Him of the Golden 

Quiver, 

LXXXVI I. 

To whom he gave the lyre that sweetly 
sounded, 
Which skilfully he held and played 
thereon. 
He piped the while, and far and wide 
rebounded 
The echo of his pipings; every one 
Of the Olympians sat with joy astounded, 
While he conceived another piece of 
fun. 
One of his old tricks — which the God 

of Day 
Perceiving, said: — " I fear thee, Son of 
May; — 

LXXXVIII. 

" I fear thee and thy sly chameleon spirit. 
Lest thou should steal my lyre and 
crooked bow; 
This glory and power thou dost from 
Jove inherit. 
To teach all craft upon the earth be- 
low; 
Thieves love and worship thee — it is thy 
merit 
To make all mortal business ebb and 
flow 
By roguery : — now, Hermes, if you dare. 
By sacred Styx a mighty oath to swear 

LXXXIX . 

" That you will never rob me, you will do 
A thing extremely pleasing to my 
heart." 
Then Mercury sware by the Stygian dew, 
That he would never steal his bow or 
dart, 
Or lay his hands on what to him WW 
due, 



HOMER'S HYMN TO MERCURY. 



6ii 



Or ever would employ his .powerful 

art 
Against his Pythian fane. Then Phoebus 

swore 
There was no God or man whom he 

loved more. 

xc. 

**And I will give thee as a good-will 
token, 
The beautiful wand of wealth and 
happiness; 
A perfect three-leaved rod of gold un- 
broken, 
Whose magic will thy footsteps ever 
bless; 
And whatsoever by Jove's voice is spoken 

Of earthly or divine from its recess, 
It, like a loving soul, to thee will speak. 
And more than this, do thou forbear to 
seek. 

XCI. 

"'For, dearest child, the divinations high 
Which thou requirest, 't is unlawful 
ever 
That thou, or any other deity 

Should understand — and vain were 
the endeavor; 
For they are hidden in Jove's mind, 
and I 
In trust of them, have sworn that I 
would never 
Betray the counsels of Jove's inmost will 
To any God — the oath was terrible. 



XCII. 

"Then, golden-wanded brother, ask me 
not 
To speak the fates by Jupiter designed ; 
But be it mine to tell their various lot 
To the unnumbered tribes of human 
kind. 
Let good to these, and ill to those be 
wrought 
As I dispense — but he who comes 
consigned 
By voice and wings of perfect augury 
To my great shrine, shall find avail in 
me. 



XCIII. 

*' Him will I not deceive, but will assist; 
But he who comes relying on such 
birds 
As chatter vainly, who would strain and 
twist 
The purpose of the Gods with idle 
words. 
And deems their knowledge light, he 
shall have misst 
His road — whilst I among my other 
hoards 
His gifts deposit. Yet, O son of May, 
I have another wondrous thing to say. 

XCIV. 

"There are three Fates, three virgin 
Sisters, who 
Rejoicing in their wind-outspeeding 
wings. 
Their heads with flour snowed over 
white and new, 
Sit in a vale round which Parnassus 
flings 
Its circling skirts — from these I have 
learned true 
Vaticinations of remotest things. 
My father cared not. Whilst they search 

out dooms. 
They sit apart and feed on honeycombs. 

XCV. 

" They, having eaten the fresh honey, 
grow 
Drunk with divine enthusiasm, and 
utter 
With earnest willingness the truth they 
know; 
But if deprived of that sweet food, 
they mutter 
All plausible delusions; — these to you 
I give; — if you inquire, they will riot 
stutter; 
Delight your own soul with them: — any 

man 
You would instruct may profit if he can. 

xcvi. 

"Take these and the fierce oxen, Maia's 
child — 



6l2 



TRANSLA TIONS. 



O'er many a horse and toil-enduring 
mule, 
O'er jagged-jawed lions, and the wild 
White-tusked boars, o'er all, by field 
or pool. 
Of cattle which the mighty Mother mild 
Nourishes in her bosom, thou shalt 
rule — 
Thou dost alone the veil from death up- 
lift — 
Thou givest not — yet this is a great gift." 

XCVII, 

Thus King Apollo loved the child of 

May 
In truth, and Jove covered their love 

with joy, 
Hermes with Gods and men even from 

that day 
Mingled, and wrought the latter much 

annoy. 
And little profit, going far astray 

Thro' the dun night. Farewell, de- 
lightful Boy, 
Of Jove and Maia sprung, — never by 

me, 
Nor thou, nor other songs, shall unre- 

membered be. 



HOMER'S HYMN TO CASTOR 
AND POLLUX. 

Ye wild-eyed Muses, sing the Twins of 

Jove, _ 
Whom the fair-ankled Leda, mixt in love 
With mighty Saturn's heaven-obscuring 

Child, 
On Taygetus, that lofty mountain wild, 
Brought forth in joy, mild Pollux void of 

blame, 
And steed-subduing Castor, heirs of 

fame. 
These are the Powers who earth-born 

mortals save 
And ships, whose flight is swift along the 

wave. 
When wintry tempests o'er the savage 

sea 
Are raging, and the sailors tremblingly 
Call on the Twins of Jove with prayer 

and vow. 



Gathered in fear upon the lofty prow, 
And sacrifice with snow-white lambs, the 

wind 
And the huge billow bursting close be- 
hind. 
Even then beneath the weltering waters 

bear 
The staggering ship — they suddenly ap- 
pear, 
On yellow wings rushing athwart the sky, 
And lull the blasts in mute tranquillity. 
And strew the waves on the white ocean's 

bed. 
Fair omen of the voyage; from toil and 

dread. 
The sailors rest, rejoicing in the sight, 
And plough the quiet sea in safe delight. 



HOMER'S HYMN TO THE MOON. 

Daughters of Jove, whose voice is 

melody. 
Muses, who know and rule all minstrelsy ! 
Sing the wide-winged Moon. Around 

the earth. 
From her immortal head in Heaven shot 

forth. 
Far light is scattered — boundless glory 

springs; 
Where'er she spreads her many-beaming 

wings 
The lampless air glows round her golden 

crown. 

But when the Moon divine from 

Heaven is gone 
Under the sea, her beams within abide, 
Till, bathing her bright limbs in Ocean's 

tide. 
Clothing her form in garments glittering 

far. 
And having yoked to her immortal car 
The beam-invested steeds, whose necks 

on high 
Curve back, she drives to a remoter sky 
A western Crescent, borne impetuously. 
Then is made full the circle of her light, 
And as she grows, her beams more bright 

and bright. 
Are poured from Heaven, where she is 

hovering then, 
A wonder and a sign to mortal men. 



HOMER'S HYMN TO THE SUN. 



613 



The Son of Saturn with this glorious Of woof ethereal, delicately twined 



Power 
Mingled in love and sleep — to whom 

she bore, 
Pandeia, a bright maid of beauty rare 
Among the Gods, whose lives eternal 

are. 

Hail Queen, great Moon, white-armed 

Divinity, 
Fair-haired and favorable, thus with 

thee, 
My song beginning, by its music sweet 
Shall make immortal many a glorious 

feat 
Of demigods, with lovely lips, so well 
Which minstrels, servants of the muses, 

tell. 



HOMER'S HYMN TO THE SUN. 



Glows in the stream of the upHfting 

wind. 
His rapid steeds soon bear him to the 

west; 
Where their steep flight his hands divine 

arrest, 
And the fleet car with yoke of gold, 

which he 
Sends from bright heaven beneath the 

shadowy sea. 

HOMER'S HYMN TO THE EARTH: 
MOTHER OF ALL. 



O UNIVERSAL mother, who dost keep 
From everlasting thy foundations deep. 
Eldest of things, Great Earth, I sing 

of thee; 
All shapes that have their dwelling in 
r\ f T ^ I the sea, 

%7:czi ir- ,*^:"iT.' °"r ""'! ' ^" ^^^-p. ^^-^ "y. -^ °- 'he gro„„d 



To the bright Sun, thy hymn of music 

pour; 
Whom to the child of star-clad Heaven 

and Earth 
Euryphaessa, large-eyed nymph, brought 

forth; 
Euryphaessa, the famed sister fair, 
Of great Hyperion, who to him did bear 
A race of loveliest children; the vounff 

Morn, ^ 

Whose arms are like twin roses newly 

born. 
The fair-haired Moon, and the immortal 

Sun, 
Who, borne by heavenly steeds his race 

doth run 
Unconquerably, illuming the abodes 
Of mortal men and the eternal gods. 

Fiercely look forth his awe-inspiring 

eyes. 
Beneath his golden helmet, whence arise 
And are shot forth afar, clear beams of 

light; 
His countenance with radiant glory 

bright 
Beneath his graceful locks far shines 

around, 
And the light vest with which his limbs 

are bound 



divine 
Live, move, and there are nourisht — 

these are thine; 
These from thy wealth thou dost sustain; 

from thee 
Fair babes are born, and fruits on every 

tree 
Hang ripe and large, revered Divinity ! 

The life of mortal men beneath thy 

sway 
Is held; thy power both gives and takes 

away ! 
Happy are they whom thy mild favors 

nourish. 
All things unstinted round them grow 

and flourish. 
For them, endures the life-sustaininc 

field 
Its load of harvest, and their cattle yield 
Large increase, and their house with 

wealth is filled. 
Such honored dwell in cities fair and 

free, 
The homes of lovely women, prosper- 
ously; 
Their sons exult in youth's new budding 

gladness, 
And their fresh daughters free from care 

or sadness, 



6i4 



TRANS LA TIONS. 



With bloom-inwoven dance and happy 

song, 
On the soft flowers the meadow-grass 

among, 
Leap round them sporting — such de- 

hghts by thee, 
Are given, rich Power, revered Divinity. 

Mother of gods, thou wife of starry 

Heaven, 
Farewell ! be thou propitious, and be 

given 
A happy life for this brief melody. 
Nor thou nor other songs shall unremem- 

bered be. 



HOMER'S HYMN TO MINERVA. 

I SING the glorious Power with azure 

eyes, 
Athenian Pallas ! tameless, chaste, and 

wise, 
Tritogenia, town-preserving maid, 
Revered and mighty; from his awful 

head 
Whom Jove brought forth, in warlike 

armor drest. 
Golden, all radiant ! wonder strange 

possest 
The everlasting Gods that shape to see, 
Shaking a javelin keen, impetuously 
Rush from the crest of ^gis-bearing 

Jove; 
Fearfully Heaven was shaken, and did 

move 
Beneath the might of the Cerulean-eyed; 
Earth dreadfully resounded, far and 

wide, 
And lifted from its depths, the sea 

swelled high 
In purple billows, the tide suddenly 
Stood still, and great Hyperion's son 

long time 
Checkt his swift steeds, till where she 

stood sublime, 
Pallas from her immortal shoulders threw 
The arms divine: wise Jove rejoiced to 

view. 
Child of the ^gis-bearer, hail to thee, 
Nor thine nor others' praise shall unre- 

membered be. 



HOMER'S HYMN TO VENUS. 

[Vv. 1-55, with some omissions.] 

Muse, sing the deeds of golden Aphro- 
dite, 
Who wakens with her smile the lulled 

delight 
Of sweet desire, taming the eternal 

kings 
Of Heaven, and men, and all the living 

things 
That fleet along the air, or whom the 

sea. 
Or earth with her maternal ministry 
Nourish innumerable, thy delight 
All seek O crowned Aphrodite ! 

Three spirits canst thou not deceive or 

quell, 
Minerva, child of Jove, who loves too 

well 
Fierce war and mingling combat, and 

the fame 
Of glorious deeds, to heed thy gentle 

flame. 
Diana golden-shafted queen. 

Is tamed not by thy smiles; the shadows 

green 
Of the wild woods, the bow, the . . . 
And piercing cries amid the swift pur- 
suit 
Of beasts among waste mountains, such 

delight 
Is hers, and men who know and do the 

right. 
Nor Saturn's first-born daughter, Vesta 

chaste. 
Whom Neptune and Apollo wooed the 

last. 
Such was the will of aegis-bearing Jove ; 
But sternly she refused the ills of Love, 
And by her mighty father's head she 

swore 
An oath not unperformed, that ever- 
more 
A virgin she would live mid deities 
Divine: her father, for such gentle ties i 
Renounced, gave glorious gifts, thus in a 

his hall y 

She sits and feeds luxuriously. O'er 

all 



THE CYCLOPS. 



615 



In every fane, her honors first arise 
From men — the eldest of Divinities. 

These spirits she persuades not, nor 

deceives, 
But none beside escape, so well she 

weaves 
Her unseen toils; nor mortal men, nor 

gods 
Who live secure in their unseen abodes. 
She won the soul of him whose fierce 

delight 
Is thunder — first in glory and in 

might. 
And, as she willed, his mighty mind 

deceiving, 
With mortal limbs his deathless limbs 

inweaving 
Concealed him from his spouse and sister 

fair. 
Whom to wise Saturn ancient Rhea bare. 

but in return, 
In Venus Jove did soft desire awaken, 
That by her own enchantments over- 
taken. 
She might, no more from human union 

free, 
Burn for a nursling of mortality. 
For once, amid the assembled Deities, 
The laughter-loving Venus from her eyes 
Shot forth the light of a soft starlight 

smile, 
And boasting said, that she, secure the 

while. 
Could bring at will to the assembled 

gods 
The mortal tenants of earth's dark 

abodes, 
And mortal offspring from a deathless 

stem 
She could produce in scorn and spite of 

them. 
Therefore he poured desire into her 

breast 
Of young Anchises, 
Feeding his herds among the mossy 

fountains 
Of the wide Ida's many-folded moun- 
tains. 
Whom Venus saw, and loved, and the 

love clung 
Like wasting fire her senses wild 

among. 



THE CYCLOPS. 

A SATYRIC DRAMA. 

TRANSLATED FROM THE GREEK OF 
EURIPIDES. 



SiLENUS. 

Chorus of Satyrs. 



Ulysses. 
The Cyclops. 



Silenus. O Bacchus, what a world of 

toil, both now 
And ere these limbs were overworn with 

age, 
Have I endured for thee ! First, when 

thou fled'st 
The mountain-nymphs who nurst thee, 

driven afar 
By the strange madness Juno sent upon 

thee; 
Then in the battle of the sons of Earth, 
When I stood foot by foot close to thy 

side, 
No unpropitious fellow-combatant, 
And driving thro' his shield my winged 

spear, 
Slew vast Enceladus. Consider now. 
Is it a dream of which I speak to thee? 
By Jove it is not, for you have the 

trophies ! 
And now I suffer more than all before. 
For when I heard that Juno had devised 
A tedious voyage for you, I put to sea 
With all my children quaint in search of 

you, 
And I myself stood on the beaked prow 
And fixt the naked mast, and all my 

boys 
Leaning upon their oars, with splash 

and strain 
Made white with foam the green and 

purple sea, — 
And so we sought you, king. We were 

sailing 
Near Malea, when an eastern wind arose, 
And drove us to this wild ^tnean rock; 
The one-eyed children of the Ocean 

God, 
The man-destroying Cyclopses inhabit, 
On this wild shore, their solitary caves. 
And one of these, named Polypheme, 

has caught us 



6i6 



TRANSLATIONS. 



To be his slaves; and so, for all delight 
Of Bacchic sports, sweet dance and 

melody, 
We keep this lawless giant's wandering 

flocks. 
My sons indeed, on far declivities, 
Young things themselves, tend on the 

youngling sheep. 
But I remain to fill the water-casks, 
Or sweeping the hard floor, or minis- 
tering 
Some impious and abominable meal 
To the fell Cyclops. I am wearied of it ! 
And now I must scrape up the littered 

floor 
With this great iron rake, so to receive 
My absent master and his evening sheep 
In a cave neat and clean. Even now I 

see 
My children tending the flocks hither- 
ward. 
Ha ! what is this ! are your Sicinnian 

measures 
Even now the same, as when with dance 

and song 
You brought young Bacchus to Althaea s 
halls? 

Chorus of Satyrs. 

STROPHE. 

Where has he of race divine 

Wandered in the winding rocks? 
Here the air is calm and fine 

For the father of the flocks; — 
Here the grass is soft and sweet, 
And the river-eddies meet 
In the trough beside the cave, 
Bright as in their fountain wave. — 
Neither here, nor on the dew 

Of the lawny uplands feeding? 
Oh, you come ! — a stone at you 

Will I throw to mend your breed- 
ing;— 
Get along, you horned thing, 
Wild, seditious, rambling ! 



EPODE. 

An lacchic melody 

To the golden Aphrodite 



Will I lift, as erst did I 

Seeking her and her delight 
With the Maenads, whose white feet 
To the music glance and fleet. 
Bacchus, O beloved, where, 
Shaking wide thy yellow hair, 
Wanderest thou alone, afar? 

To the one-eyed Cyclops, we 
Who by right thy servants are, 

Minister in misery. 
In these wretched goat-skins clad, 

Far from thy delights and thee. 



Silenus. Be silent, sons; command 
the slaves to drive 

The gathered flocks into the rock-rooft 
cave. 
Chorus. Go ! But what needs this 

serious haste, O father? 
Silenus. I see a Grecian vessel on 
the coast, 

And thence the rowers with some general 

Approaching to this cave. — About their 
necks 

Hang empty vessels, as they wanted 
food, 

And water-flasks, — Oh miserable stran- 
gers ! 

Whence come they that they know not 
what and who 

My master is, approaching in ill hour 

The inhospitable roof of Polypheme, 

And the Cyclopian jaw-bone, man- 
destroying? 

Be silent. Satyrs, while I ask and hear 

Whence coming, they arrive the ^tnean 
hill. 
Ulysses. Friends, can you show me 
some clear water spring. 

The remedy of our thirst? Will any 
one 

Furnish with food seamen in want of it? 

Ha! what is this? We seem to be ar- 
rived 

At the blithe court of Bacchus. I ob- 
serve 

This sportive band of Satyrs near the 
caves. 

First let me greet the elder. — Hail ! 
Silenus. Hail thou, 

O Stranger ! tell thy country and thy 
race. 



THE CYCLOPS. 



617 



Ulysses. The Ithacan Ulysses and the 

king 
Of Cephalonia. 

Sile}iHS. Oh ! I know the man, 

Wordy and shrewd, the son of Sisyphus. 

Ulysses. I am the same, but do not 

rail upon me. — 
Silenus. Whence sailing do you come 

to Sicily? 
Ulysses. From Ilion, and from the 

Trojan toils. 
Silenus. How toucht you not at your 

paternal shore? 
Ulysses. The strength of tempests 

bore me here by force. 
Silenus. The self-same accident oc- 
curred to me. 
Ulysses. Were you then driven here 

by stress of weather? 
Silenus. Following the Pirates who 

had kidnapt Bacchus. 
Ulysses. What land is this, and who 

inhabit it? — 
Silenus. iEtna, the loftiest peak in 

Sicily. 
Ulysses. And are there walls, and 

tower-surrounded towns? 
Silenus. There are not. — These lone 

rocks are bare of men. 
Ulysses. And who possess the land? 

the race of beasts? 
Silenus. Cyclops, who live in caverns, 

not in houses. 
Ulysses. Obeying whom? Or is the 

state popular? 
Silenus. Shepherds: no one obeys 

any in aught. 
Ulysses. How live they? do they sow 

the corn of Ceres? 
Silenus. On milk and cheese, and on 

the flesh of sheep. 
Ulysses. Have they the Bromian 

drink from the vine's stream? 
Silenus. Ah ! no; they live in an un- 
gracious land. 
Ulysses. And are they just to stran- 
gers ? — hospitable ? 
Silenus. They think the sweetest 

thing a stranger brings 
Is his own flesh. 

Ulysses. What ! do they 

eat man's flesh? 



Silenus. No one comes here who is 

not eaten up. 
Ulysses. The Cyclops now — where 

is he? Not at home? 
Silenus. Absent on ^tna, hunting 

with his dogs. 
Ulysses. Know'st thou what thou 

must do to aid us hence? 
Silenus. I know not : we will help 

you all we can. 
Ulysses. Provide us food, of which 

we are in want. 
Silenus. Here is not anything, as I 

said, but meat. 
Ulysses. But meat is a sweet remedy 

for hunger. 
Silenus. Cow's milk there is, and 

store of curdled cheese. 
Ulysses. Bring out : — I would see all 

before I bargain. 
Silemts. But how much gold will you 

engage to give? 
Ulysses. I bring no gold, but Bacchic 

juice. 
Si le nits. Oh joy ! 

'Tis long since these dry lips were wet 

with wine. 
Ulysses. Maron, the son of the God, 

gave it me. 
Silenus. Whom I have nurst a baby 

in my arms. 
Ulysses. The son of Bacchus, for your 

clearer knowledge. 
Silenus. Have you it now? — or is it 

in the ship? 
Ulysses. Old man, this skin contains 

it, which you see. 
Silenus. Why this would hardly be a 

mouthful for me. 
Ulysses. Nay, twice as much as you 

can draw from thence. 
Silenus. You speak of a fair fountain. 

sweet to me. 
Ulysses. Would you first taste of the 

unmingled wine? 
Silenus. 'T is just — tasting invites 

the purchaser. 
Ulysses. Here is the cup, together 

with the skin. 
Silenus. Pour: that the draught may 

fillip my remembrance. 
Ulysses. See ! 



6i8 



TRAMS LA riONS. 



Silenus. Papaiax ! what a 

sweet smell it has ! 
Ulysses. You see it then? — 
Sileniis. By Jove, no ! but I smell it. 
Ulysses. Taste, that you may not 

praise it in words only. 
Silenus. Babai ! Great Bacchus calls 

me forth to dance ! 
Joy! joy! 

Ulysses. Did it flow sweetly 

down your throat? 
Silenus. So that it tingled to my very 

nails. 
Ulysses. And in addition I will give 

you gold. 
Silenus. Let gold alone ! only unlock 

the cask. 
Ulysses. Bring out some cheeses now, 

or a young goat. 
Silenus. That will I do, despising 

any master. 
Yes, let me drink one cup, and I will give 
All that the Cyclops feed upon their 

mountains. 

Chorus. Ye have taken Troy and laid 

your hands on Helen? 
Ulysses. And utterly destroyed the 

race of Priam. 

Silenus. The wanton wretch ! she 

was bewitcht to see 
The many-colored anklets and the chain 
Of woven gold which girt the neck of 

Paris, 
And so she left that good man Menelaus. 
There should be no more women in the 

world 
But such as are reserved for me alone. — 
See, here are sheep, and here are goats, 

Ulysses, 
Here are unsparing cheeses of prest 

milk; 
Take them; depart with what good speed 

ye may; 
First leaving my reward, the Bacchic 

dew 
Of joy-inspiring grapes. 

Ulysses. Ah me ! Alas ! 

What shall we do? the Cyclops is at 

hand ! 
Old man, we perish ! whither can we 

fly? 



Silenus. Hide yourselves quick with- 
in that hollow rock. 
Ulysses. 'T were perilous to fly into 

the net. 
Silenus. The cavern has recesses 
numberless; 
Hide yourselves quick. 

Ulysses. That will I never do ! 

The mighty Troy would be indeed dis- 
graced 
If I should fly one man. How many 

times 
Have I withstood, with shield immov- 
able, 
Ten thousand Phrygians! — if I needs 

must die. 
Yet will I die with glory; — if I live, 
The praise which I have gained will yet 
remain. 
Silenus. What, ho ! assistance, com- 
rades, haste, assistance ! 

The Cyclops, Silenus, Ulysses; 
Chorus. 

Cyclops. What is this tumult? Bac- 
chus is not here, 
Nor tympanies nor brazen castanets. 
How are my young lambs in the cavern? 

Milking 
Their dams or playing by their sides? 

And is 
The new cheese prest into the bulrush 

baskets? 
Speak ! I'll beat some of you till you 

rain tears — 
Look up, not downwards when I speak 
to you. 
Siletius. See ! I now gape at Jupiter 
himself, 
I stare upon Orion and the stars. 

Cyclops. Well, is the dinner fitly 

cookt and laid? 
Silenus. All ready, if your throat is 

ready too. 
Cyclops. Are the bowls full of milk 

besides? 
Silenus. O'er-brimming; 

So you may drink a tunful if you will. 
Cyclops. Is it ewe's milk or cow's 

milk, or both mixt? — 
Silenus. Both, either; only pray 
don't swallow me. 



THE CYCLOPS. 



619 



Cyclops. By no means. ■ 

What is this crowd I see beside the 

stalls? 
Outlaws or thieves? for near my cavern- 
home, 
I see my young lambs coupled two by 

two 
With willow bands; mixt with my cheeses 

lie 
Their implements; and this old fellow 

here 
Has his bald head broken with stripes. 

Silenns. Ah me ! 

I have been beaten till I burn with fever. 

Cyclops. By whom? Who laid his 

fist upon your head? 
Silenus. Those men, because I would 

not suffer them 
To steal your goods. 

Cyclops. Did not the rascals 

know 
I am a God, sprung from the race of 

heaven? 
Silenus. I told them so, but they bore 

off your things, 
And ate the cheese in spite of all I said, 
And carried out the lambs — and said, 

moreover, 
They'd pin you down with a three-cubit 

collar, 
And pull your vitals out thro' your one 

eye, 
Torture your back with stripes, then bind- 
ing you. 
Throw you as ballast into the ship's hold. 
And then deliver you, a slave, to move 
Enormous rocks, or found a vestibule. 
Cyclops. In truth? Nay, haste, and 

place in order quickly 
The cooking knives, and heap upon the 

hearth. 
And kindle it, a great faggot of wood — 
As soon as they are slaughtered, they 

shall fill 
My belly, broiling warm from the live 

coals. 
Or boiled and seethed within the bub- 
bling caldron. 
I am quite sick of the wild mountain 

game, 
Of stags and lions I have gorged enough. 
And I grow hungry for the flesh of men. 



Silenus. Nay, master, something new 

is very pleasant 
After one thing forever, and of late 
Very few strangers have approacht ou/ 

cave. 
Ulysses. Hear, Cyclops, a plain tale 

on the other side. 
We, wanting to buy food, came from our 

ship 
Into the neighborhood of your cave, and 

here 
This old Silenus gave us in exchange 
These lambs for wine, the which he took 

and drank, 
And all by mutual compact, without force. 
There is no word of truth in what he 

says, 
For slyly he was selling all your store. 
Silenus. I? May you perish, 

wretch — 
Ulysses. If I speak false! 

Silenus. Cyclops, I swear by Nep- 
tune who begot thee, 
By mighty Triton and by Nereus old. 
Calypso and the glaucous ocean Nymphs, 
The sacred waves and all the race ot 

fishes — 
Be these the witnesses, my dear sweet 

master. 
My darling little Cyclops, that I never 
Gave any of your stores to these false 

strangers; — 
If I speak false may those whom most I 

love. 
My children, perish wretchedly ! 

Chorus. There stop ! 

I saw him giving these things to the 

strangers. 
If I speak false then may my father 

perish. 
But do not thou wrong hospitality. 

Cyclops. You lie ! I swear that he is 

juster far 
Than Rhadamanthus — I trust more in 

him. 
But let me ask, whence have ye sailed, 

O strangers? 
Who are you? And what city nourisht 

ye? 
Ulysses. Our race is Ithacan — having 

destroyed 
The town of Troy, the tempests of the 

sea 



620 



TRANSLA TIONS. 



Have driven us on thy land, O Poly- 

pheme. 
Cyclops. What, have ye shared in the 

unenvied spoil 
Of the false Helen, near Scamander's 

stream ? 
Ulysses, The same, having endured a 

woful toil. 
Cyclops. Oh, basest expedition ! sailed 

ye not 
From Greece to Phrygia for one woman's 

sake? 
Ulysses. 'T was the Gods' work — no 

mortal was in fault. 
But, O great offspring of the ocean- 
king, 
We pray thee and admonish thee with 

freedom, 
That thou dost spare thy friends who 

visit thee. 
And place no impious food within thy 

jaws. 
For in the depths of Greece we have 

upreared 
Temples to thy great father, which are 

all 
His homes. The sacred bay of Tsenarus 
Remains inviolate, and each dim recess 
Scoopt high on the Malean promontory. 
And airy Sunium's silver-veined crag. 
Which divine Pallas keeps unprofaned 

ever, 
The Gerastian asylums, and whate'er 
Within wide Greece our enterprise has 

kept 
From Phrygian contumely; and \\\ which 
You have a common care, for you inhabit 
The skirts of Grecian land, under the 

roots 
Of ^tna and its crags, spotted with fire. 
Turn them to converse under human 

laws. 
Receive us shipwreckt suppliants, and 

provide 
Food, clothes, and fire, and hospitable 

gifts; 
Nor fixing upon oxen-piercing spits 
Our limbs, so fill your belly and your 

jaws. 
Priam's wide land has widowed Greece 

enough; 
And weapon-winged murder heapt to- 
gether 



Enough of dead, and wives are husband^ 

less. 
And ancient women and gray fathers 

wail 
Their childless age; — if you should roast 



the rest. 



And 't is a bitter feast that you prepare, 
Where then would any turn? Yet be 

persuaded; , 

Forego the lust of your jaw-bone; preferj 
Pious humanity to wicked will: 
Many have bought too dear their evil 

joys. 
Silenus. Let me advise you, do not 

spare a morsel 
Of all his flesh. If you should eat his 

tongue 
You would become most eloquent, O 

Cyclops. 
Cyclops. Wealth, my good fellow, is 

the wise man's God, 
All other things are a pretence and 

boast. 
What are my father's ocean promontories, 
The sacred rocks whereon he dwells, to 

me? 
Stranger, I laugh to scorn Jove's thunder- 
bolt, 
I know not that his strength is more than 

mine. 
As to the rest I care not: — When he 

pours 
Rain from above, I have a close pavilion 
Under this rock, in which I lie supine, 
Feasting on a roast calf or some wild 

beast, 
And drinking pans of milk, and glori- 
ously 
Emulating the thunder of high heaven. 
And when the Thracian wind pours down 

the snow, 
I wrap my body in the skins of beasts, 
Kindle a fire, and bid the snow whirl on. 
The earth, by force, whether it will or 

no. 
Bringing forth grass, fattens my flocks 

and herds. 
Which, to what other God but to myself 
And this great belly, first of deities. 
Should I be bound to sacrifice? I well 

know 
The wise man's only Jupiter is this. 
To eat and drink during his little day, , 



II 



THE CYCLOPS. 



621 



And give himself no care. And as for 

those 
Who complicate with laws the life of 

man, 
I freely give them tears for their reward. 
I will not cheat my soul of its delight, 
Or hesitate in dining upon you: — 
And that I may be quit of all demands, 
These are my hospitable gifts; — fierce 

fire 
And yon ancestral caldron, which o'er- 

bubbiing 
Shall finely cook your miserable flesh. 
Creep in ! — 

Ulysses. Ai ! ai ! I have escaped the 

Trojan toils, 
I have escaped the sea, and now I fall 
Under the cruel grasp of one impious 

man. 
O Pallas, mistress. Goddess, sprung from 

Jove, 
Now, now, assist me ! Mightier toils 

than Troy 
Are these; — I totter on the chasms of 

peril; — 
And thou who inhabitest the thrones 
Of the bright stars, look, hospitable Jove, 
Upon this outrage of thy deity, 
Otherwise be considered as no God ! 

Chorus (alone). 
For your gaping gulf, and your gullet wide 
The ravin is ready on every side, 
The limbs of the strangers are cookt and 
done, 
There is boiled meat, and roast meat, 
and meat from the coal, 
You may chop it, and tear it, and gnash 
it for fun. 
An hairy goat's-skin contains the 
whole. 
Let me but escape, and ferry me o'er 
The stream of your wrath to a safer 

shore, 
The Cyclops ^tnean is cruel and bold, 
He murders the strangers 
That sit on his hearth. 
And dreads no avengers 
To rise from the earth. 
He roasts the men before they are cold, 
He snatches them broiling from the coal. 
And from the caldron pulls them whole. 



And minces their flesh and gnaws their 

bone 
With his cursed teeth, till all be gone. 
Farewell, foul pavilion: 

Farewell, rites of dread ! 
The Cyclops vermilion. 

With slaughter uncloying, 
Now feasts on the dead. 

In the flesh of strangers joying ! 
Ulysses. O Jupiter ! I saw within 
the cave 
Horrible things; deeds to be feigned in 

words. 
But not to be believed as being done. 
Chorus. What ! sawest thou the im- 
pious Polypheme 
Feasting upon your loved companions 
now? 
Ulysses. Selecting two, the plumpest 
of the crowd. 
He graspt them in his hands. — 

Chorus. Unhappy man ! 

Ulysses. Soon as we came into this 

craggy place. 
Kindling a fire, he cast on the broad 

hearth 
The knotty limbs of an enormous oak. 
Three waggon-loads at least, and then 

he strewed 
Upon the ground, beside the red fire- 
light. 
His couch of pine leaves; and he milkt 

the cows, 
And pouring forth the white milk, filled 

a bowl 
Three cubits wide and four in depth, as 

much 
As would contain ten amphorae, and 

bound it 
With ivy wreaths; then placed upon the 

fire 
A brazen pot to boil, and made red hot 
The points of spits, not sharpened with 

the sickle. 
But with a fruit tree bough, and with 

the jaws 
Of axes for ^tnean slaughterings. ^ 
And when this God -abandoned cook of 

hell 
Had made all ready, he seized two of us 

1 I confess I do not understand this. 



622 



TRANSLATIONS. 



And killed them in a kind of measured 

manner; 
For he flung one against the brazen 

rivets 
Of the huge caldron, and seized the 

other 
By the foot's tendon, and knockt out 

his brains 
Upon the sharp edge of the craggy stone : 
Then peeled his flesh with a great cook- 
ing-knife 
And put him down to roast. The other's 

limbs 
He chopt into the caldron to be boiled. 
And I, with the tears raining from my 

eyes, 
Stood near the Cyclops, ministering to 

him; 
The rest, in the recesses of the cave. 
Clung to the rock like bats, bloodless 

with fear. 
When he was filled with my companions' 

flesh, 
He threw himself upon the ground and 

sent 
A loathsome exhalation from his maw. 
Then a divine thought came to me. I 

filled 
The cup of Maron, and I offered him 
To taste, and said: — "Child of the 

Ocean God, 
Behold what drink the vines of Greece 

produce, 
The exultation and the joy of Bacchus." 
He, satiated with his unnatural food, 
Received it, and at one draught drank it 

off, 
And taking my hand, praised me: — 

" Thou hast given 
A sweet draught after a sweet meal, dear 

guest." 
And I perceiving that it pleased him, 

filled 
Another cup, well knowing that the wine 
Would wound him soon and take a sure 

revenge. 
And the charm fascinated him, and I 
Plied him cup after cup, until the drink 
Had warmed his entrails, and he sang 

aloud 
In concert with my wailing fellow-seamen 
A hideous discord — and the cavern 

rung. 



I have stolen out, so that if you will 
You may achieve my safety and yout 

own. 
But say, do you desire, or not, to fly 
This uncompanionable man, and dwell 
As was your wont among the Grecian 

Nymphs 
Within the fanes of your beloved God? 
Your father there within agrees to it. 
But he is weak and overcome with wine, 
And caught as if with bird-lime by the 

cup, 
He claps his wings and crows in doting 

joy. 
You who are young escape with me, and 

find 
Bacchus your ancient friend; unsuited he 
To this rude Cyclops. 

Chorus. Oh my dearest friend, 

That I could see that day, and leave for- 
ever 
The impious Cyclops. 

Ulysses. Listen then what a punish- 
ment I have 
For this fell monster, how secure a flight 
From your hard servitude. 

Chorus. O sweeter far 

Than is the music of an Asian lyre 
Would be the news of Polypheme de- 
stroyed. 
Ulysses. Delighted with the Bacchic 
drink he goes 
To call his brother Cyclops — who in- 

habit § 

A village upon ^tna not far off. ' 

Chorus. I understand, catching him 
when alone 
You think by some measure to dispatch 

him, 
Or thrust him from the precipice. 

Ulysses. Oh no; ^ i 

Nothing of that kind; my device is W 
subtle. 
Chorus. How then? I heard of old 

that thou wert wise. 
Ulysses. I will dissuade him from 
this plan, by saying 
It were unwise to give the Cyclopses 
This precious drink, which if enjoyed 

alone 
Would make life sweeter for a longei 
time. 



THE CYCLOPS. 



62^ 



When vanquisht by the Bacchic power, 

he sleeps, 
There is a trunk of olive wood within, 
Whose point having made sharp with 

this good sword 
I will conceal in fire, and when I see 
It is alight, will fix it, burning yet, 
Within the socket of the Cyclops' eye 
And melt it out with fire — as when a 

man 
Turns by its handte a great augur round, 
Fitting the framework of a ship with 

beams. 
So will I, in the Cyclops' fiery eye 
Turn round the brand and dry the pupil 

Chorus. Joy ! I am mad with joy at 

your device. 
Ulysses. And then with you, my 

friends, and the old man, 
We '11 load the hollow depth of our black 

ship, 
And row with double strokes from this 

dread shore. 
Chorus. May I, as in libations to a 

God, 
Share in the blinding him with the red 

brand? 
I would have some communion in his 

death. 
Ulysses. Doubtless: the brand is a 

great brand to hold. 
Chorus. Oh ! I would lift a hundred 

wagon-loads. 
If like a wasp's nest I could scoop the 

eye out 
Of the detested Cyclops. 

Ulysses. Silence now ! 

Ve know the close device — and when I 

call, 
Look ye obey the masters of the craft. 
I will not save myself and leave behind 
My comrades in the cave : I might es- 
cape, 
Having got clear from that obscure 

recess. 
But 't were unjust to leave in jeopardy 
The dear companions who sailed here 

with me. 

Chorus. 

Come ! who is first, that with his hand 
Will urge down the burning brand 



Thro' the lids, and quench and pierce 
The Cyclops' eye so fiery fierce? 

Semichorus I. (^Song within.) 

Listen ! listen ! he is coming, 

A most hideous discord humming. 

Drunken, museless, awkward, yelling, 

Far along his rocky dwelling; 

Let us with some comic spell 
Teach the yet untcachable. 
By all means he must be blinded, 
If my council be but minded. 

Setnichorus II. 

Happy those made odorous 

With the dew which sweet grapes 
weep, 
To the village hastening thus, 

Seek the vines that soothe to sleep. 
Having first embraced thy friend, 
There in luxury without end. 
With the strings of yellow hair, 
Of thy voluptuous leman fair, 
Shalt sit playing on a bed ! — 
Speak what door is opened? 

Cyclops. 

ifa! ha! ha! I'm full of wine, 
Heavy with the joy divine. 
With the young feast oversated, 
Like a merchant's vessel freighted 
To the water's edge, my crop 
Is laden to the gullet's top. 
The fresh meadow grass of spring 
Tempts me forth thus wandering 
To my brothers on the mountains, 
W^ho shall share the wine's sweet 
fountains. 
Bring the cask, O stranger, bring 1 

Chorus. 

One with eyes the fairest 
Cometh from his dwelling. 

Some one loves thee, rarest. 
Bright beyond my telling. 

In thy grace thou shinest 

Like some nymph divinest, 

In her caverns dewy: — 

All delights pursue thee, 

Soon pied flowers, sweet-breathing, 

Shall thy head be wreathing. 



624 



TRANS LA TIONS. 



Ulysses. Listen, O Cyclops, for I am 
well skilled 
In Bacchus, whom I gave thee of to 

drink. 
Cyclops. What sort of God is Bacchus 

then accounted? 
Ulysses. The greatest among men for 

joy of life. 
Cyclops. I gulpt him down with very 

great delight. 
Ulysses. This is a God who never in- 
jures men. 
Cyclops. How does the God like liv- 
ing in a skin? 
Ulysses. He is content wherever he is 

put. 
Cyclops. Gods should not have their 

body in a skin. 
Ulysses. If he gives joy what is his 

skin to you? 
Cyclops. I hate the skin, but love the 

wine within. 
Ulysses. Stay here, now drink, and 

make your spirit glad. 
Cyclops. Should I not share this 

liquor with my brothers? 
Ulysses. Keep it yourself, and be 

more honored so. 
Cyclops. I were more useful giving to 

my friends. 
Ulysses. But village mirth breeds 

contests, broils, and blows. 
Cyclops. When I am drunk none 

shall lay hands on me. — 
Ulysses. A drunken man is better 

within doors. 
Cyclops. He is a fool, who drinking, 

loves not mirth. 
Ulysses. But he is wise, who drunk, 

remains at home. 
Cyclops. What shall I do, Silenus? 

Shall I stay? 
Silenus. Stay — for what need have 

you of pot companions? 
Cyclops. Indeed this place is closely 

carpeted 
With flowers and grass. 

Silenus. And in the sun- warm 

noon 
■T is sweet to drink. Lie down beside 

me now, 
Placing your mighty sides upon the 

ground. 



Cyclops. What do you put the cup 

behind me for? 
Silenus. That no one here may 

touch it. 
Cyclops. Thievish one ! 

You want to drink; — here place it in 

the midst. 
And thou, O stranger, tell how art thou 

called? 
Ulysses. My name is Nobody. What 

favor now * 

Shall I receive to praise you at your 

hands? 
Cyclops. I'll feast on you the last of 

your companions. 
Ulysses. You grant your guest a fair 

reward, O Cyclops. 
Cyclops. Ha! what is this? Stealing 

the wine, you rogue ! | 

Silenus. It was this stranger kissing ! 

me because | 

I looked so beautiful. | 

Cyclops. You shall repent 

For kissing the coy wine that loves you 

not. 
Silenus. By Jupiter ! you said that I 

am fair. 
Cyclops. Pour out, and only give me 

the cup full. 
Silenus. How is it mixt? let me 

observe. 
Cyclops. Curse you ! 

Give it me so. 

Silenus. Not till I see you wear 

That coronal, and taste the cup to you. 
Cyclops. Thou wily traitor ! 
Silenus. But the wine is sweet. 

Ay, you will roar if you are caught in 

drinking. 
Cyclops. See now, my lip is clean 

and all my beard. 
Silenus. Now put your elbow right 

and drink again. 
As you see me drink — ... Hi 

Cyclops. How now? ■' 

Silemis. Ye Gods, what 

a delicious gulp ! 
Cyclops. Guest, take it; — you pour 

out the wine for me. 
Ulysses. The wine is well accustomed 

to my hand. 
Cyclops. Pour out the wine ! 
Ulysses. I pour; only be silent. 



THE CYCLOPS. 



625 



Cyclops, Silence is a hard task to him 

who drinks. 
Ulysses. Take it and drink it off; 
leave not a dreg. 
Oh, that the drinker died with his own 
draught ! 
Cyclops. Fapai ! the vine must be a 

sapient plant. 
Ulysses. If you drink much after a 
mighty feast, 
Moistening your thirsty maw, you will 

sleep well; 
If you leave aught, Bacchus will dry you 
up. 
Cyclops. Ho ! ho ! I can scarce rise. 
What pure delight ! 
The heavens and earth appear to whirl 

about 
Confusedly. I see the throne of Jove 
And the clear congregation of the Gods. 
Now if the Graces tempted me to kiss 
I would not, for the loveliest of them all 
I would not leave this Ganymede. 
^ilcmis. Polypheme, 

I am the Ganymede of Jupiter. 

Cyclops. By Jove you are; I bore 
you off from Dardanus. 

Ulysses and the Chorus 

Ulysses. Come, boys of Bacchus, 

children of high race, 
This man within is folded up in sleep. 
And soon will vomit flesh from his fell 

maw ; 
The brand under the shed thrusts out its 

smoke, 
No preparation needs, but to burn out 
The monster's eye; — but bear yourselves 

like men. 
Chorus. We will have courage like 

the adamant rock. 
All things are ready for you here; go in, 
Before our father shall perceive the noise. 
Ulysses. Vulcan, ^Etnean king ! burn 

out with fire 
The shining eye of this thy neighboring 

monster ! 
And thou, O sleep, nursling of gloomy 

night, 
Descend unmixt on this God-hated beast, 
And suffer not Ulysses and his comrades. 
Returning from their famous Trojan toils, 



To perish by this man, who cares not 

either 
For God or mortal; or I needs must 

think 
That Chance is a supreme divinity. 
And things divine are subject to her 

power. 

Chorus. 

Soon a crab the throat will seize 

Of him who feeds upon his guest, 
Fire will burn his lamp-like eyes 

In revenge of such a feast ! 
A great oak stump now is lying 
In the ashes yet undying. 

Come, Maron, come ! 
Raging let him fix the doom, 
Let him tear the eyelid up 
Of the Cyclops — that his cup 

May be evil ! 
Oh ! I long to dance and revel 
With sweet Bromian, long desired, 
In loved ivy wreaths attired; 
Leaving this abandoned home — 
Will the moment ever come? 
Ulysses. Be silent, ye wild things ! 
Nay, hold your peace. 
And keep your lips quite close; dare not 

to breathe, 
Or spit, or e'en wink lest ye wake the 

monster. 
Until his eye be tortured out with fire. 
Chorus. Nay, we are silent, and we 

chaw the air. 
Ulysses. Come now, and lend a hand 
to the great stake 
Within — it is delightfully red hot. 

Chorus. You then command who first 
should seize the stake 
To burn the Cyclops' eye, that all may 

share 
In the great enterprise. 

Seviichorus I. We are too far. 

We cannot at this distance from the door 
Thrust fire into his eye. 

Seniichorus II. And we just now 

Have become lame; cannot move hand 
or foot. 
Chorus. The same thing has occurred 
to us, — our ankles 
Are sprained with standing here, I know 
not how. 



626 



TRANSLA TIONS. 



Ulysses. What, sprained with stand- 
ing still ? 
Chorus. And there is dust 

Or ashes in our eyes, I know not whence. 
Ulysses. Cowardly dogs ! ye will not 

aid me then? 
Chorus. With pitying my own back 
and my back bone. 
And with not wishing all my teeth 

knockt out. 
This cowardice comes of itself — but stay, 
I know a famous Orphic incantation 
To make the brand stick of its own 

accord 
Into the skull of this one-eyed son of 
Earth. 
Ulysses. Of old I knew ye thus by 
nature; now 
I know ye better. — I will use the aid 
Of my own comrades — Yet tho' weak of 

hand 
Speak cheerfully, that so ye may awaken 
The courage of my friends with your 
blithe words. 
Chorus. This I will do with peril of 
my life, 
And blind you with my exhortations, 
Cyclops. 

Hasten and thrust, 
And parch up to dust. 
The eye of the beast. 
Who feeds on his guest. 
Burn and blind 
The ^tnean hind ! 
Scoop and draw. 
But beware lest he claw 
Your limbs near his maw. 
Cyclops. Ah me ! my eyesight is 

parcht up to cinders. 
Chorjis. What a sweet poean ! sing 

me that again ! 
Cyclops. Ah me ! indeed, what woe 
has fallen upon me ! 
But wretched nothings, think ye not to 

flee 
Out of this rock; I, standing at the out- 
let, 
Will bar the way and catch you as you 
pass. 
Chorus. What are you roaring out, 

Cyclops? 
Cyclops. I perish ! 

Chorus. For you are wicked. 



Cyclops. And besides miserable. 

Chorus. What, did you fall into the 

fire when drunk? 
Cyclops. 'T was Nobody destroyed 

me. 
Chorus. Why then no one 

Can be to blame. 

Cyclops. I say 't was Nobody 

Who blinded me. 

Chorus. Why then you are not 

blind. 
Cyclops. I wish you were as blind as 

I am. 
Chorus. Nay, 

It cannot be that no one made you blind. 
Cyclops. You jeer me; where, I ask, 

is Nobody? 
Chorus. Nowhere, O Cyclops. 
Cyclops. It was that stranger ruined 
me: — the wretch 
First gave me wine and then burnt out 

my eye. 
For wine is strong and hard to struggle 

with. 
Have they escaped, or are they yet 
within? 
Chorus. They stand under the dark- 
ness of the rock 
And cling to it. 

Cyclops. At my right hand 

or left? 
Chorus. Close on your right. 
Cyclops. Where ? 

Chorus. Near the rock itself. 

You have them. 

Cyclops. Oh, misfortune on 

misfortune ! 
I've crackt my skull. 

Chorus. Now they escape you 

there. 
Cyclops. Not there, altho' you say so. 
Chorus. Not on that side. 

Cyclops. Where then? 
Chorus. They creep about 

you on your left. 
Cyclops. Ah ! I am mockt ! They 

jeer me in my ills. 
Chorus. Not there ! he is a little 

there beyond you. 
Cyclops. Detested wretch ! where are 

you? 
Ulysses. Far from you 

I keep with care this body of Ulysses. 



TO STELLA. 



627 



Cyclops. What do you say? You 

proffer a new name. 
Ulysses. My father named me so; 

and I have taken 
A full revenge for your unnatural feast; 
I should have done ill to have burned 

down Troy 
And not revenged the murder of my 

comrades. 
Cyclops. Ai ! ai ! the ancient oracle 

is accomplisht; 
It said that I should have my eyesight 

blinded 
By you coming from Troy, yet it fore- 
told 
That you should pay the penalty for this 
By wandering long over the homeless 

sea. 
Ulysses. I bid thee weep — consider 

what I say, 
I go towards the shore to drive my ship 
To mine own land, o'er the Sicilian 

wave. 
Cyclops. Not so, if whelming you 

with this huge stone 
I can crush you and all your men to- 
gether ; 
I will descend upon the shore, tho' blind, 
Groping my wayadown the steep ravine. 
Chorus. And we, the shipmates of 

Ulysses now, 
Will serve our Bacchus all our happy 

lives. 

EPIGRAMS. 
C I. — TO STELLA. 

FROM THE GREEK OF PLATO. 

Tuou wert the morning star among the 
living. 
Ere thy fair light had fled; — 
Now, having died, thou art as Hesperus, 
giving 
New splendor to the dead. } 

n.— KISSING HELENA. 

FROM THE GREEK OF PLATO. 

Kissing Helena, together 

With my kiss, my soul beside it 



Came to my lips, and there I kept 
it,— 
For the poor thing had wandered thither, 
To follow where the kiss should guide 
it, 
Oh, cruel I, to intercept it! 

III. — SriRIT OF PLATO. 

FROM THE GREEK. 

Eagle ! why soarest thou above that 

tomb ? 
To what sul)lime and star-ypaven home 

Floatest thou? 
"I am the image of swift Plato's spirit. 
Ascending heaven — Athens doth inherit 

His corpse below." 

IV. —CIRCUMSTANCE. 

FROM THE GREEK. 

A MAN who was about to hang himself, 
Finding a purse, then threw away his 
rope; 
The owner, coming to reclaim his pelf, 
The halter found and used it. So is 
Hope 
Changed for Despair — one laid upon 
the shelf, 
We take the other. Under heaven's 
high cope 
Fortune is God — all you endure and do 
Depends on circumstance as much as 
you. 

FRAGMENT OF THE ELEGY ON 
THE DEATH OF ADONIS. 

FROM THE GREEK OF BION. 

I MOURN Adonis dead — loveliest 

Adonis — 
Dead, dead Adonis — and the Loves 

lament. 
Sleep no more, Venus, wrapt in purple 

woof — 
Wake, violet-stoled queen, and weave 

the crown 
Of Death, — 't is Misery calls, — for he 

is dead. 



628 



TRANSLA TIONS. 



The lovely one lies wounded in the 

mountains, 
His white thigh struck with the white 

tooth; he scarce 
Yet breathes; and Venus hangs in agony 

there. 
The dark blood wanders o'er his snowy 

limbs, 
His eyes beneath their lids are lustreless, 
The rose has fled from his wan Hps, and 

there 
That kiss is dead, which Venus gathers 

yet. 

A deep deep wound Adonis . . . 

A deeper Venus bears upon her heart. 

See, his beloved dogs are gathering 

round — 
The Oread nymphs are weeping — 

Aphrodite 
With hair unbound is wandering thro' 

the woods, 
Wildered, ungirt, unsandalled — the 

thorns pierce 
Her hastening feet and drink her sacred 

blood. 
Bitterly screaming out she is driven on 
Thro' the long vales; and her Assyrian 

boy, 
Her love, her husband calls — The purple 

blood 
From his struck thigh stains her white 

navel now, 
Her bosom, and her neck before like 

snow. 

Alas for Cytherea — the Loves mourn — 
The lovely, the beloved is gone — and 

now 
Her sacred beauty vanishes away. 
For Venus whilst Adonis lived was fair — 
Alas her loveliness is dead with him. 
The oaks and mountains cry " Ai ! ai ! 

Adonis ! " 
The springs their waters changed to tears 

and weep — 
The flowers are withered up with 

grief ... 

. Ai ! ai ! Adonis is dead 

Echo resounds Adonis dead. 

Who will weep not thy dreadful woe, O 
Venus? 



Soon as she saw and knew the mortal 
wound 

Of her Adonis — saw the life-blood flow 

From his fair thigh, now wasting, wail- 
ing loud 

She claspt him and cried " Stay, 

Adonis ! 

Stay dearest one, . . . 

and mix my lips with thine — 

Wake yet a while Adonis — oh but once, 

That I may kiss thee now for the last 
time — 

But for as long as one short kiss may 
live — 

Oh let thy breath flow from thy dying soul 

Even to my mouth and heart, that I may 
suck 

That . . . 

FRAGMENT OF THE ELEGY ON 
THE DEATH OF BION. 

FROM THE GREEK OF MOSCHUS. 

Ye Dorian woods and waves lament 
aloud, — 

Augment your tide, O streams, with fruit- 
less tears. 

For the beloved Bion is no more. 

Let every tender herb and plant and 
flower, 

From each dejected bud and drooping 
bloom. 

Shed dews of liquid sorrow, and with 
breath 

Of melancholy sweetness on the wind 

Diffuse its languid love; let roses blush, 

Anemones grow paler for the loss 

Their dells have known; and thou, O 
hyacinth. 

Utter thy legend now — yet more, dumb 
flower, 

Than "Ah! alas! " — thine is no com- 
mon grief — 

Bion the [sweetest singer] is no more. 

FROM THE GREEK OF 
MOSCHUS. 

Tac aXa Tav y\avKav oTaf aivefxci arpe'/Lta 
jBaAArj — k. t. A. 

When winds that move not its calm sur- 
face sweep 



PAN, ECHO, AND THE SATYR. 



629 



The azure sea, I love the land no more; 
The smiles of the serene and tranquil 

deep 
Tempt my unquiet mind. — But when 

the roar 
Of Ocean's gray abyss resounds, and 

foam 
Gathers upon the sea, and vast waves 

burst, 
I turn from the drear aspect to the home 
Of earth and its deep woods, where in- 

tersperst. 
When winds blow loud, pines make 

sweet melody. 
Whose house is some lone bark, whose 

toil the sea. 
Whose prey the wandering fish, an evil 

lot 
Has chosen. — But I my languid limbs 

will fling 
Beneath the plane, where the brook's 

murmuring 
Moves the calm spirit, but disturbs it 

not. 

PAN, ECHO, AND THE SATYR. 

FROM THE GREEK OF MOSCHUS. 

Pan loved his neighbor Echo — but that 
child 
Of Earth and Air pined for the Satyr 
leaping; 
The Satyr loved with wasting madness 
wild 
The bright nymph Lyda, — and so 
three went weeping. 
As Pan loved Echo, Echo loved the 
Satyr, 
The Satyra Lyda — and so love con- 
sumed them. — 
And thus to each — which was a woful 
matter — 
To bear what they inflicted Justice 
doomed them; 
For in as much as each might hate the 
lover, 
Each loving, so was hated. — Ye that 
love not 
Be warned — in thought turn this example 

over, 
That when ye love — the like return ye 
prove not. 



FROM VERGIL'S TENTH 
ECLOGUE. 

[Vv. 1-26.] 

Melodious Arethusa, o'er my verse 
Shed thou once more the spirit of thy 
stream : 
Who denies verse to Gallus? So, when 
thou 
Glidest beneath the green and purple 
gleam 
Of Syracusan waters, mayst thou flow 

Unmingled with the bitter Doric dew ! 
Begin, and, whilst the goats are brows- 
ing now 
The soft leaves, in our way let us 
pursue 
The melancholy loves of Gallus. List ! 
We sing not to the dead: the wild 
woods knew 
His sufferings, and their echoes . . . 
Young Naiads, ... in what far 
woodlands wild 
Wandered ye when unworthy love possest 
Your Gallus? Not where Pindus is 
up-piled, 
Nor where Parnassus' sacred mount, nor 
where 
Aonian Aganippe expands . . . 
The laurels and the myrtle-copses dim. 

The pine-encircled mountain, Msenalus, 
The cold crags of Lycaeus, weep for him; 
And Sylvan, crowned with rustic 
coronals, 
Came shaking in his speed the budding 
wands 
And heavy lilies which he bore : we 
knew 
Pan the Arcadian. 

What madness is this, Gallus? Thy 

heart's care 
With willing steps pursues another there. 

SONNET. 

FROM THE ITALIAN OF DANTE, 

Dante Alighieri to Guido Cavalcanti. 
GuiDO, I would that Lapo, thou, and I 
Led by some strong enchantment, might 
ascend 



630 



TRANSLA TIONS. 



A magic ship, whose charmed sails 

should fly 
With winds at will where'er our thoughts 

might wend, 
And that no change, nor any evil chance 
Should mar our joyous voyage; but it 

might be, 
That even satiety should still enhance 
Between our hearts their strict com- 
munity : 
And that the bounteous wizard then 

would place 
Vanna and Bice and my gentle love. 
Companions of our wandering, and would 

grace 
With passionate talk, wherever we might 

rove. 
Our time, and each were as content and 

free 
As I believe that thou and I should be. 



THE FIRST CANZONE OF THE 
CONVITO. 

FROM THE ITALIAN OF DANTE. 



Ye who intelligent the third heaven 

move, 
Hear the discourse which is within my 
Heart, 
Which cannot be declared, it seems so 
new; 
The Heaven whose course follows your 
power and art. 
Oh, gentle creatures that ye are ! me 

drew. 
And therefore may I dare to speak to 
you, 
Even of the life which now I live — and 
yet 
I pray that ye will hear me when I 

cry, 
And tell of mine own Heart this 
novelty; 
How the lamenting Spirit moans in it, 
And how a voice there murmurs against 

her 
Who came on the refulgence of your 
sphere. 



II. 



A sweet Thought, which was once the 
life within 
This heavy Heart, many a time and oft 
Went up before our Father's feet, and 

there 
It saw a glorious Lady throned aloft; 
And its sweet talk of her my soul did 
win. 
So that I said, "Thither I too will 

fare." 
That Thought is fled, and one doth 
now appear 
Which tyrannizes me with such fierce 
stress. 
That my heart trembles — ye may see 

it leap — 
And on another Lady bids me keep 
Mine eyes, and says — " Who would have 

blessedness 
Let him Init look upon that Lady's eyes, 
Let him not fear the agony of sighs," 

III. 

This lowly Thought, which once would 

talk with me 
Of a bright Seraph sitting crowned on 
high, 
Found such a cruel foe it died, and so 
My Spirit wept, the grief is hot even 
now — 
And said, " Alas for me ! how swift could 

flee 
That piteous thought which did my life 
console ! " 
And the afflicted one questioning 

Mine eyes, if such a Lady saw they 
never. 
And why they would . . . 

I said: " Beneath those eyes might 
stand for ever 
He whom regards must kill 

with . . . 
To have known their power stood me in 

little stead, 
Those eyes have lookt on me, and I am 
dead." 

TV. 

" Thou art not dead, but thou hast 
wandered, 



MATILDA GATHERING FLOWERS. 



631 



Thou Soul of ours, who thyself dost 

fret, 
A Spirit of gentle Love beside me said; 
For that fair Lady, whom thou dost 

regret. 
Hath so transformed the life which thou 

hast led, 
Thou scornest it, so worthless art thou 

made. 
And see how meek, how pitiful, how 

staid. 
Yet courteous, in her majesty she is. 
And still call thou her ' Woman ' in thy 

thought; 
Her whom, if thou thyself deceives! 

not. 
Thou wilt behold deckt with such loveli- 

ness. 
That thou wilt cry '[Love] only Lord, lo 

here 
Thy handmaiden, do what thou wilt with 

her.'" 



My Song, I fear that thou wilt find but 
few 
Who fitly shall conceive thy reasoning 
Of such hard matter dost thou en- 
tertain. 
Whence, if by misadventure chance 
should bring 
Thee to base company, as chance may 
do. 
Quite unaware of what thou dost 

contain, 
I prithee comfort thy sweet self 
again. 
My last delight; tell them that they are 

dull, 
And bid them own that thou art beautiful. 

MATILDA GATHERING 
FLOWERS. 

FROM THE PURGATORIO OF DANTE, 
CANTO XXVIII, I -5 1. 

And earnest to explore within — around 
The divine wood, whose thick green 

living woof 
Tempered the young day to the sight — 

I wound 



Up the green slope, beneath the forest's 
roof, 

With slow soft steps leaving the moun- 
tain's steep. 

And sought those inmost labyrinths, 
motion-proof 

Against the air, that in that stillness deep 
And solemn, struck upon my forehead 

bare. 
The slow soft stroke of a continuous . . . 

In which the leaves tremblingly 

were 
All bent towards that part where earliest 
The sacred hill obscures the morning air. 

Yet were they not so shaken from the 

rest. 
But that the birds, percht on the utmost 

spray, 
Incessantly renewing their blithe quest, 

With perfect joy received the early day, 
Singing within the glancing leaves, whose 

sound 
Kept a low burden to their roundelay. 

Such as from bough to bough gathers 

around 
The pine forest on bleak Chiassi's shore, 
When iEolus Sirocco has unbound. 

My slow steps had already borne me o'er 
Such space within the antique wood, 

that I 
Perceived not where I entered any more, 

WHien, lo ! a stream whose little waves 

went by, 
Bending towards the left thro' grass that 

grew 
Upon its bank, impeded suddenly 

My going on. Water of purest hue 
On earth, would appear turbid and im- 
pure 
Compared with this, whose unconcealing 
dew, 

Dark, dark, yet clear, moved under the 

obscure 
Eternal shades, whose interwoven looms 
The rays of moon or sunlight ne'er en- 
dure. 



632 



TRANSLA TIONS. 



I moved not with my feet, but mid the 
glooms 

Pierced with my charmed eye contem- 
plating 

The mighty multitude of fresh May 
blooms 

Which starred that night, when, even as 

a thing 
That suddenly for blank astonishment 
Charms every sense, and' makes all 

thought take wing, 

A solitary woman ! and she went 
Singing and gathering flower after fiower. 
With which her way was painted and 
besprent. 

Bright lady, who, if looks had ever 

power 
To bear true witness of the heart within, 
Dost bask under the beams of love, 

come lower 

Towards this bank. I prithee let me win 
This much of thee, to come, that I may 

hear 
Thy song; like Proserpine, in Enna's 

glen, 

Thou seemest to my fancy, singing here 
And gathering flowers, as that fair 

maiden when 
She lost the spring, and Ceres her, more 

dear. 

FRAGMENT 

ADAPTED FROM THE VITA NUOVA 
OF DANTE. 

What Mary is when she a little smiles 
I cannot even tell or call to mind, 
It is a miracle, so new, so rare. 



SONNET 

FROM THE ITALIAN OF CAVALCANTI. 

GuiDO Cavalcanti to Dante 
Alighieri. 

Returning from its daily quest, my 
Spirit 



Changed thoughts and vile in thee doth 

weep to find: 
It grieves me that thy mild and gentle 

mind 
Those ample virtues which it did inherit 
Has lost. Once thou didst loathe the 

multitude 
Of blind and madding men — I then loved 

thee — 
I loved thy lofty songs and that sweet 

mood 
When thou wert faithful to thyself and 

me. 
I dare not now thro' thy degraded state 
Own the delight thy strains inspire — in 

vain 
I seek what once thou wert — we can not 

meet 
As we were wont. Again and yet again 
Ponder my words: so the false Spirit 

shall fly 
And leave to thee thy true integrity. 

SCENES FROM THE MAGICO 
PRODIGIOSO. 

FROM the SPANISH OF CALDERON. 

SCENE I. — Enter Cyprian, dressed as 
a Student; Clarin and MoscON as 
poor Scholars, with books. 

Cyprian. In the sweet solitude of 

this calm place, 
This intricate wild wilderness of trees 
And flowers and undergrowth of odorous 

plants, 
Leave me; the books you brought out of 

the house 
To me are ever best society. 
And while with glorious festival and song, 
Antioch now celebrates the consecration 
Of a proud temple to great Jupiter, 
And bears his image in loud jubilee 
To its new shrine, I would consume what 

still 
Lives of the dying day, in studious 

thought, 
Far from the throng and turmoil. You, 

my friends, 
Go, and enjoy the festival; it will 
Be worth your pains. You may return 

for me 



SCENES FROM THE MAG ICO PRODIG/OSO. 



633 



When the sun seeks its grave among the 

billows, 
Which among dim gray clouds on the 

horizon, 
Dance like white plumes upon a hearse; 

— and here 
I shall expect you. 

Moscon. I can not bring my mind, 
Great as my haste to see the festival 
Certainly is, to leave you. Sir, without 
Just saying some three or four thousand 

words. 
How is it possible that on a day 
Of such festivity, you can be content 
To come forth to a solitary country 
With three or four old books, and turn 

your back 
On all this mirth ? 

Clarin. My master's in the right; 

There is not anything more tiresome 
Than a procession day, with troops, and 

priests, 
And dances, and all that. 

Moscon. From first to last, 

Clarin, you are a temporising flatterer: 
You praise not what you feel but what 

he does; — 
Toad-eater ! 

Clarin. You lie — under a 

mistake — 
For this is the most civil sort of lie 
That can be given to a man's face. I 

now 
Say what I think. 

Cyprian. Enough, you foolish 

fellows ! 
Pufft up with your own doting ignorance, 
You always take the two sides of one 

question. 
Now go; and as I said, return for me 
When night falls, veiling in its shadows 

wide 
This glorious fabric of the universe. 
Afoscon. How happens it, altho' you 

can maintain 
The folly of enjoying festivals, 
That yet you go there? 

Clarin. Nay, the consequence 

Is clear : — who ever did what he advises 
Others to do? — 

Moscon. W^ould that my feet 

were wings, 
So would I fly to Livia. \_Exit. 



Clarin. To speak truth, 

Livia is she who has surprised my 

heart; 
But he is more than half-way there. — 

Soho! 
Livia, I come; good sport, Livia, soho! 

{Exit. 
Cyprian. Now, since I am alone, 
let me examine 
The question which has long disturbed 

my mind 
With doubt, since first I read in Plinius 
The words of mystic import and deep 

sense 
In which he defines God. My intellect 
Can find no God with whom these marks 

and signs 
Fitly agree. It is a hidden truth 
Which I must fathom. 

[Cyprian reads ; the D^mon, dressed 
in a Court di-css, en/ers.] 
Dtciiifln. Search even as thou 

wilt, 
But thou shalt never find what I cnn 
hide. 
Cyprian. What noise is that among 
the boughs? Who moves? 
What art thou? — 

Dicinon. 'T is a foreign gentle- 

man. 
Even from this morning I have lost my 

way 
In this wild place; and my poor horse at 

last, 
Quite overcome, has stretcht himself 

upon 
The enamelled tapestry of this mossy 

mountain, 
And feeds and rests at the same time. 

I was 
Upon my way to Antioch upon business 
Of some importance, but wrapt up in 

cares 
(Who is exempt from this inheritance?) 
I parted from my company, and lost 
My way, and lost my servants and my 
comrades. 
Cyprian. 'T is singular that even 

within the sight 
Of the high towers of Antioch you could 

lose 
Your way. Of all the avenues and green 
paths 



634 



TRANSLA TIONS. 



Of this wild wood there is not one but 

leads, 
As to its centre, to the walls of Antioch; 
Take which you will you cannot miss 

your road. 
Damon. And such is ignorance ! 

Even in the sight 
Of knowledge, it can draw no profit 

from it, 
But as it still is early, and as I 
Have no acquaintances in Antioch, 
Being a stranger there, I will even wait 
The few surviving hours of the day, 
Until the night shall conquer it. I see 
Both by your dress and by the books in 

which 
You find delight and company, that you 
Are a great student; — for my part, I 

feel 
Much sympathy in such pursuits. 

Cyprian. Have you 

Studied much? 

Dcemon. No, — and yet I 

know enough 
Not k) be wholly ignorant. 

Cyprian. Pray, Sir, 

"What science may you know? — 
Dcemon. Many. 

Cyprian. Alas ! 

Much pains must we expend on one 

alone. 
And even then attain it not; — but you 
Have the presumption to assert that you 
Know many without study. 

Dctmon. And with truth. 

For in the country whence I come the 

sciences 
Require no learning, — they are known. 
Cyprian. Oh would 

I were of that bright country ! for in this 
The more we study, we the more dis- 
cover 
Our ignorance. 

DcBtnon. It is so true, that I 

Had so much arrogance as to oppose 
The chair of the most high Professor- 
ship, 
And obtained many votes, and tho' I 

lost. 
The attempt was still more glorious, 

than the failure 
Could be dishonorable. If you believe 

not, 



Let us refer it to dispute respecting 
That which you know the best, and 

altho' I 
Know not the opinion you maintain, and 

tho' 
It be the true one, 1 will take the con- 
trary. 
Cyprian. The offer gives me plea- 
sure. I am now 
Debating with myself upon a passage 
Of Plinius, and my mind is rackt with 

doubt 
To understand and know who is the 

God 
Of whom he speaks. 

Dcemon. It is a passage, if 

I recollect it right, coucht in these 

words : 
" God is one supreme goodness, one 

pure esscHce, 
One substance, and one sense, all sight, 

all hands. 
Cyprian. 'T is true. 
Dcemon. What difficulty find 

you here? 
Cyprian. I do not recognize among 

the Gods 
The God defined by Plinius; if he must 
Be supreme goodness, even Jupiter 
Is not supremely good; because we see 
His deeds are evil, and his attributes 
Tainted with mortal weakness; in what 

manner 
Can supreme goodness be consistent 

with 
The passions of humanity? 

DiTmon. The wisdom 

Of the old world maskt with the names 

of Gods 
The attributes of Nature and of Man; 
A sort of popular philosophy. 

Cyprian. This reply will not satisfy 

me, for 
Such awe is due to the high name of 

God 
That ill should never be imputed. Then 
Examining the question with more care, 
It follows, that the Gods would always 

will 
That which is best, were they supremely 

good. 
How then does one will one thing, one 

another ? 



SCENES FROM THE MAGI CO PRODIGIOSO. 



635 



And that you may not say that I allege 
Poetical or philosophic learning: — 
Consider the ambiguous responses 
Of their oracular statues; from two 

shrines 
Two armies shall obtain the assurance of 
One victory. Is it not indisputable 
That two contending wills can never 

lead 
To the same end? And being opposite, 
If one be good is not the other evil? 
Evil in God is inconceivable; 
But supreme goodness fails among the 

Gods 
Without their union. 

Dionon. I deny your major. 

These responses are means towards some 

end 
Unfathomed by our intellectual beam. 
They are the work of providence, and 

more 
The battle's loss may profit those who 

lose, 
Than victory advantage those who win. 
Cyprian. That I admit; and yet that 

God should not 
(Falsehood is incompatible with deity) 
Assure the victory; it would be enough 
To have permitted the defeat. If God 
Be all sight, — God, who had beheld the 

truth, 
Would not have, given assurance of an 

end 
Never to be accomplisht : thus, altho' 
The Deity may according to his attributes 
Be well distinguisht into persons, yet 
Even in the minutest circumstance 
His essence must be one. 

Dicmon. To attain the end 

The affections of the actors in the scene 
Must have been thus influenced by his 

voice. 
Cyprian. But for a purpose thus 

subordinate 
He might have employed Genii, good or 

evil, — 
A sort of spirits called so by the learned, 
Who roam about inspiring good or evil. 
And from whose influence and existence 

we 
May well infer our immortality. 
Thus God might easily, without descent 
To a gross falsehood in his proper person, 



Have moved the affections by this media- 
tion 
To the just point. 

D(zmon. These trifling con- 

tradictions 
Do not suffice to impugn the unity 
Of the high Gods; in things of great 

importance 
They still appear unanimous; consider 
That glorious fabric man, — his work- 
manship 
Is stampt with one conception. 

Cyprian. Who made man 

Must have, methinks, the advantage of 

the others. 
If they are equal, might they not have 

risen '" 

In opposition to the work, and being 
All hands, according to our author here, 
Have still destroyed even as the other 

made ? 
If equal in their power, unequal only 
In opportunity, which of the two 
Will remain conqueror? 

Dainoti. On impossible 

And false hypothesis there can be built 
No argument. Say, what do you infer 
From this? 

Cyprian. That there must be a 

mighty God 
Of supreme goodness and of highest 

grace, 
All sight, all hands, all truth, infallible. 
Without an equal and without a rival. 
The cause of all things and the effect of 

nothing. 
One power, one will, one substance, and 

one essence. 
And in whatever persons, one or two, 
His attributes may be distinguisht, one 
Sovereign power, one solitary essence. 
One cause of all cause. \_^J'heyrise. 

Dirrnon. How can I impugn 

So clear a consequence? 

Cyprian. Do you regret 

My victory? 

Dcemon. Who but regrets a check 
In rivalry of wit? I could reply 
And urge new difficulties, but will now 
Depart, for I hear steps of men ap- 
proaching, 
And it is time that I should now pursue 
My journey to the city. 



636 



TRANSLA TIONS. 



Cyprian. Go in peace ! 

Dcemon. Remain in peace ! — Since 
thus it profits him 
To study, I will wrap his senses up 
In sweet oblivion of all thought, but of 
A piece of excellent beauty; and as I 
Have power given me to wage enmity 
Against Justina's soul, I will extract 
From one effect two vengeances. 

\^Aside and exit. 
Cyprian. I never 

Met a more learned person. Let me now 
Revolve this doubt again with careful 
mind. S^He reads. 

Floro and Lelio enter. 
Lelio. Here stop. These toppling 
rocks and tangled boughs, 
Impenetrable by the noonday beam, 
Shall be sole witnesses of what we — 

Floro. Draw ! 

If there were words, here is the place for 

deeds. 

Lelio. Thou needest not instruct me; 

well I know 

That, in the field, the silent tongue of 

steel 
Speaks thus, — [ They fight. 

Cyprian. Ha! what is this? 

Lelio, — Floro, 
Be it enough that Cyprian stands between 

you, 
Altho' unarmed. 

Lelio. Whence comest thou, to 

stand 
Between me and my vengeance ! 

Floro. From what rocks 

And desert cells? 

Enter MOSCON rt';^^/ Clarin. 
Moscon. Run ! run ! for 

where we left 
My master, I now hear the clash of 
swords. 
Clarin. I never run to approach 
things of this sort, 
But only to avoid them. Sir ! Cyprian ! 
sir ! 
Cyprian. Be silent, fellows ! What! 
two friends who are 
In blood and fame the eyes and hope of 

Antioch, 
One of the noble race of the Colalti, 
The other son o' the Governor, adven- 
ture 



And cast away, on some slight cause no 

doubt. 
Two lives, the honor of their country? 

Lelio. Cyprian \ 

Altho' my high respect towards your 

person 
Holds now my sword suspended, thou 

canst not 
Restore it to the slumber of the scabbard: 
Thou knowest more of science than the 

duel ; 
For when two men of honor take the field, 
No counsel nor respect can make them 

friends 
But one must die in the dispute. 

Floro. I pray 

That you depart hence with your people, 

and 
Leave us to finish what we have begun 
Without advantage. — 

Cyprian. Tho' you may 

imagine 
That I know little of the laws of duel, 
Which vanity and valor instituted. 
You are in error. By my birth I am 
Held no less than yourselves to know 

the limits 
Of honor and of infamy, nor has study 
Quencht the free spirit which first ordered 

them; 
And thus to me, as one well experienced 
In the false quicksands of the sea of 

honor. 
You may refer the merits of the case; 
And if I should perceive in your rela- 
tion 
That either has the right to satisfaction 
From the other, I give you my word of 

honor 
To leave you. 

Lelio. Under this condition then 

I will relate the cause, and you will cede 
And must confess the impossibility 
Of compromise; for the same lady is 
Beloved by Floro and myself. 

Floro. It seems 

Much to me that the light of day should 

look 
Upon that idol of my heart — but he — 
Leave us to fight, according to thy word. 
Cyprian. Permit one question further: 

is the lady 
Impossible to hope or not? 



SCENES FROM THE MAG/CO PRODIGIOSO. 



637 



Lelio. She is 

So excellent, that if the light of day 
Should excite Floro's jealousy, it were 
Without just cause, for even the light of 

day 
Trembles to gaze on her. 

Cyprian. Would you for your 

Part, marry her? 

Floro. Such is my confidence. 

Cyprian. And you? 

Lelio. Oh ! would that I 

could lift my hope 
So high, for tho' she is extremely poor, 
Her virtue is her dowry. 

Cyprian. And if you both 

Would marry her, is it not weak and 

vain, 
Culpable and unworthy, thus beforehand 
To slur her honor? What would the 

world say 
If one should slay the other, and if she 
Should afterwards espouse the murderer? 

[ The rivals agree to refer their quarrel 
to Cyprian; who in consequence visits 
Justin A, and becomes enamoured of 
her : she disdains him, and he retires 
to a solitary sea-shore. 



SCENE 11. 

Cyprian. 

O memory ! permit it not 

That the tyrant of my thought 

Be another soul that still 

Holds dominion o'er the will, 

That would refuse, but can no more. 

To bend, to tremble, and adore. 

Vnin idolatry ! — I saw. 

And gazing, became blind with error; 
Weak ambition, which the awe 

Of her presence bound to terror ! 
So beautiful she was — and I, 
Between my love and jealousy, 
Am so convulst with hope and fear. 
Unworthy as it may appear; — 
So bitter is the life I live, 
That, hear me, Hell ! I now would give 
To thy most detested spirit 
My soul, for ever to inherit. 
To suffer punishment and pine. 
So this woman may be mine. 



Hear'st thou. Hell! dost thou reject it? 
My soul is offered ! 

Dicmon (^utiseen^. I accept it. 

[ I'empest, with thunder and lightning. 

Cyprian. 
What is this? ye heavens for ever pure. 
At once intensely radiant and obscure ! 

Athwart the ethereal halls 
The lightning's arrow and the thunder- 
balls 
The day affright. 
As from the horizon round. 
Burst with eaithcjuakc sound. 
In mighty torrents the electric foun- 
tains; — 
Clouds quench the sun, and thunder- 
smoke 
Strangles the air, and • fire eclipses 
heaven. 
Philosophy, thou canst not even 
Compel their causes underneath thy yoke ; 
From yonder clouds even to the waves 

below 
The fragments of a single ruin choke 
Imagination's flight; 
For, on flakes of surge, like feathers 
light. 
The ashes of the desolation cast 
Upon the gloomy blast. 
Tell of the footsteps of the storm. 
And nearer see the melancholy form 
Of a great ship, the outcast of the sea, 

Drives miserably ! 
And it must fly the pity of the port, 
Or perish, and its last and sole resort 
Is its own raging enemy. 
The terror of the thrilling cry 
Was a fatal prophecy 
Of coming death, who hovers now 
Upon that shattered prow, 
That they who die not may be dying 

still. 
And not alone the insane elements 
Are populous with wild portents, 
But that sad ship is as a miracle 

Of sudden ruin, for it drives so fast 
It seems as if it had arrayed its form 
With the headlong storm. 
It strikes — I almost feel the shock, — 
It stumbles on a jagged rock, — 
Sparkles of blood on the white foam 
are cast. \^A tempest. 



638 



TRANSLA TIONS. 



All exclaim xvithin. We are all lost. 
Diernon {luithin'). Now from this 

plank will I 
Pass to the land and thus fulfil my 
scheme. 

Cyprian. 

As in contempt of the elemental rage 
A man comes forth in safety, while 

the ship's 
Great form is in a watery eclipse 

Obliterated from the Ocean's page, 

And round its wreck the huge sea- 
monsters sit, 

A horrid conclave, and the whistling 
wave 

Is heapt over its carcase, like a grave. 

The D^MON enters as escaped from 
the sea. 

Dcemon {aside). It was essential to 
my purposes 
To wake a tumult on the sapphire ocean, 
That in this unknown form I might at 

length 
"Wipe out the blot of the discomfiture 
Sustained upon the mountain, and assail 
With a new war the soul of Cyprian, 
Forging the instruments of his destruc- 
tion 
Even from his love and from his wisdom. 

— Oh! 
Beloved earth, dear mother, in thy 

bosom 
I seek a refuge from the monster who 
Precipitates itself upon me. 

Cyprian. Friend, 

Collect thyself; and be the memory 
Of thy late suffering, and thy greatest 

sorrow 
But as a shadow of the past, — for nothing 
Beneath the circle of the moon, Init 

flows 
And changes, and can never know re- 
pose. 
Dcemon. And who art thou, before 
whose feet my fate 
Has prostrated me? 

Cyprian. One who, moved 

with pity, 
Would soothe its stings. 

Dcemon. Oh, that can never be ! 

No solace can my lasting sorrows find. 
Cyprian. Wherefore? 



D(Tmo7i. Because my happi- 

ness is lost. 
Yet I lament what has long ceast to be 
The object of desire or memory, 
And my life is not life. 

Cyprian. Now, since the fury 

Of this earthquaking hurricane is still. 
And the crystalline heaven has reas- 

sumed 
Its windless calm so quickly, that it 

seems 
As if its heavy wrath had been awak- 
ened 
Only to overwhelm that vessel, — speak, 
Who art thou, and whence comest thou? 
Dcemon. Far more 

My coming hither cost, than thou hast 

seen 
Or I can telL Among my misadventures 
This shipwreck is the least. Wilt thou 

hear? 
Cyprian. Speak. 

Dcemon. Since thou desirest, I will 

then unveil 
Myself to thee; — for in myself I am 
A world of happiness and misery; 
This I have lost, and that I must lament 
Forever. In my attributes I stood 
So high and so heroically great. 
In lineage so supreme, and with a genius 
Which penetrated with a glance the world 
Beneath my feet, that won by my high 

merit 
A king — whom I may call the king of 

kings, 
Because all others tremble in their pride 
Before the terrors of his countenance. 
In his high palace rooft with brightest 

gems 
Of living light — call them the stars of 

Heaven — 
Named me his counsellor. But the high 

praise 
Stung me with pride and envy, and I 

rose 
In mighty competition, to ascend 
His seat and place my foot triumphantly 
Upon his subject thrones. Chastised, I 

know 
The depth to which ambition falls; too 

mad 
Was the attempt, and yet more mad 

were now 



SCENES FROM THE MAG ICO PRODIGIOSO. 



639 



Repentance of the irrevocable deed: — 
Therefore I chose this ruin with the 

glory 
Of not to be subdued, before the shame 
Of reconciling me with him who reigns 
By coward cession. — Nor was I alone, 
Nor am I now, nor shall I be alone; 
And there was hope, and there may still 

be hope. 
For many suffrages among his vassals 
Hailed me their lord and king, and 

many still 
Are mine, and many more, perchance 

shall be. 
Thus vanquisht, tho' in fact victori- 
ous, 
I left his seat of empire, from mine eye 
Shooting forth poisonous lightning, while 

my words 
With inauspicious thunderings shook 

Heaven, 
Proclaiming vengeance, public as my 

wrong. 
And imprecating on his prostrate slaves 
Rapine, and death, and outrage. Then 

I sailed 
Over the mighty fabric of the world, 
A pirate ambusht in its pathless sands, 
A lynx croucht watchfully among its 

caves 
And craggy shores; and I have wandered 

over 
The expanse of these wild wildernesses 
In this great ship, whose bulk is now 

dissolved 
In the light breathings of the invisible 

wind. 
And which the sea has made a dustless 

ruin. 
Seeking ever a mountain, thro' whose 

forests 
I seek a man whom I must now compel 
To keep his word with me. I came 

arrayed 
In tempest, and altho' my power could 

well 
Bridle the forest winds in their career, 
For other causes I forbore to soothe 
Their fury to Favonian gentleness; 
I could and would not; (thus I wake in 

him \^Aside. 

A love of magic art). Let not this 

tempest, 



Nor the succeeding calm excite thy 

wonder; 
For by my art the sun would turn as 

pale 
As his weak sister with unwonted fear. 
And in my wisdom are the orbs of 

Heaven 
Written as in a record; I have pierced 
The flaming circles of their wondrous 

spheres 
And know them as thou knowest every 

corner 
Of this dim spot. Let it not seem to 

thee 
That I l)oast vainly; wouldst thou that I 

work 
A charm over this waste and savage 

wood, 
This Babylon of crags and aged trees, 
Filling its leafy coverts with a horror 
Thrilling and strange? I am the friend- 
less guest 
Of these wild oaks and pines — and as 

from thee 
I have received the hospitality 
Of this rude place, I offer thee the fruit 
Of years of toil in recompense; whate'er 
Thy wildest dream presented to thy 

thought 
As object of desire, that shall be thine. 



And thenceforth shall so firm an amity 
'Twixt thee and me be, that neither 

fortune, 
The monstrous phantom which pursues 

success. 
That careful miser, that free prodigal. 
Who ever alternates with changeful 

hand. 
Evil and good, reproach and fame; nor 

Time, 
That lodestar of the ages, to whose 

beam 
The winged years speed o'er the intervals 
Of their unequal revolutions; nor 
Heaven itself, whose beautiful bright 

stars 
Rule and adorn the world, can ever 

make 
The least division between thee and me, 
Since now I find a refuge in thy favor. 



640 



TRANSLA TIONS. 



SCENE III.— The DAEMON tempts 
JUSTINA, who is a Christian. 

DcBnion. 

Abyss of Hell ! I call on thee, 
Thou wild misrule of thine own anarchy ! 
From thy prison-house set free 
The spirits of voluptuous death, 
That with their mighty breath 
They may destroy a world of virgin 

thoughts; 
Let her chaste mind with fancies thick 
as motes 
Be peopled from thy shadowy deep, 
Till her guiltless fantasy 
Full to overflowing be ! 
And with sweetest harmony 
Let birds, and flowers, and leaves and 
all things move 
To love, only to love. 
Let nothing meet her eyes 
But signs of Love's soft victories; 

Let nothing meet her ear 
But sounds of Love's sweet sorrow, 
So that from faith no succor she may 
borrow. 
But, guided by my spirit blind 
And in a magic snare entwined, 

She may now seek Cyprian. 
Begin, while I in silence bind 
My voice, when thy sweet song thou 
hast began. 

A Voice {zvithiji). 
What is the glory far above 
All else in human life ! 



All. 



Love ! love ! 



[ While these words are sung the D^mon 
goes out at one door, and JuSTlNA 
enters at another. 

The First Voice. 

There is no form in which the fire 

Of love its traces has imprest not. 
Man lives far more in love's desire 
Than by life's breath, soon possest 
not. 
If all that lives must love or die, 
All shapes on earth, or sea, or sky, 
With one consent to Heaven cry 



That the glory far above 
All else in life is — 

All. 

Love ! oh love l 

yustina. 

Thou melancholy thought which art 
So flattering and so sweet, to thee 
When did I give the liberty 

Thus to afflict my heart? 
What is the cause of this new power 

Which doth my fevered being move. 
Momently raging more and more? 
What subtle pain is kindled now 
Which from my heart doth overflow 

Into my senses? — 

All. 

Love ! oh love ! 

yustina. 
'T is that enamoured nightingale 

Who gives me the reply; 
He ever tells the same soft tale 

Of passion and of constancy 
To his mate who rapt and fond 
Listening sits a bough beyond. 

Be silent. Nightingale — no more 
Make me think, in hearing thee 

Thus tenderly thy love deplore, 
If a bird can feel his so, 
What a man would feel for me. 
And, voluptuous Vine, O thou 

Who seekest most when least pursuing, — 
To the trunk thou interlacest 
Art the verdure which embracest, 

And the weight which is its ruin, — 

No more with green embraces. Vine, 
Make me think on what thou lovest, — 

For whilst thus thy boughs entwine, 
I fear lest thou should'st teach me, 
sophist. 

How arms might be entangled too. 

Light-enchanted Sunflower, thou 
Who gazest ever true and tender 
On the sun's revolving splendor ! 
Follow not his faithless glance 
With thy faded countenance. 
Nor teach my beating heart to fear. 
If leaves can mourn without a tear, 
How must eyes weep ! O Nightingale, 
Cease from thy enamoured tale, — 



SCENES FROM THE MAG ICO PRODIGIOSO. 



641 



Leafy Vine, uawreathe thy bower, 
Restless Sunflower, cease to move, — 

Or tell me all, what poisonous power 
Ye use against me — 

All. 

Love ! love ! love ! 
yustina. It cannot be ! — Whom 
have I ever loved? 
Trophies of my oblivion and disdain, 
Floro and Lelio did I not reject? 
And Cyprian? 

\_She becomes trotibled at the name of 
Cyprian. 

Did I not requite him 
With such severity, that he has fled 
Where none has ever heard of him 

again? — 
Alas ! I now begin to fear that this 
May be the occasion whence desire grows 

bold, 
As if there were no danger. From the 

moment 
That I pronounced to my own listening 

heart, 
Cyprian is absent, O me miserable ! 
I know not what I feel ! \_More calmly. 

It must be pity 
To think that such a man, whom all the 

world 
Admired, should be forgot by all the 

world, 
And I the cause. 

\_She again becomes troubled. 

And yet if it were pity, 

Florio and Lelio might have equal share. 

For they are both imprisoned for my 

sake. 
( Calmly. ) Alas ! what reasonings are 

these? it is 
Enough I pity him, and that, in vain, 
Without this ceremonious subtlety. 
And woe is me ! I know not where to 

find him now. 
Even should I seek him thro' this wide 

world. 

Enter D^MON. 
Damon. Follow, and I will lead thee 

where he is. 
yustina. And who art thou, who hast 

found entrance hither. 
Into my chamber thro' the doors and 

locks? 



Art thou a monstrous shadow which my 

madness 
Has formed in the idle air? 

Deem on. No. I am one 

Called by the thought which tyrannizes 

thee 
From his eternal dwelling; who this 

day 
Is pledged to bear thee unto Cyprian. 
Justina. So shall thy promise fail. 
This agony 
Of passion which afflicts my heart and 

soul 
May sweep imagination in its storm; 
The will is firm. 

Dicmon. Already half is done 

In the imagination of an act. 
The sin incurred, the pleasure then 

remains; 
Let not the will stop half-way on the 
road. 
Justina. I will not be discouraged, 
nor despair, 
Altho' I thought it, and altho' 't is true 
That thought is but a prelude to the 

deed: — 
Thought is not in my power, but action 

is: 
I will not move my foot to follow thee. 
Damon. But a far mightier wisdom 
than thine own 
Exerts itself within thee, with such 

power 
Compelling thee to that which it in- 
clines 
That it shall force thy step; how wilt 

thou then 
Resist, Justina? 

yustina. By my free-will. 

Dixmon. I 

Must force thy will. 

yustina. It is invincible; 

It were not free if thou hadst power 

upon it. 

[//t" draivs but cannot move her. 

D(Xjnon. Come, where a pleasure 

waits thee. 
yustina. It were bought 

Too dear. 

Damon. 'T will soothe thy heart 

to softest peace. 
yustina. 'T is dread captivity. 
Dcemon, 'T is joy, 't is glory, 



642 



TRANSLA TIONS. 



Justina. 'T is shame, 't is torment, 

't is despair. 
DiVDion. But how 

Canst thou defend thyself from that or 

me, 
If my power drags thee onward? 

Jtistina. My defence 

Consists in God. 

[^He vainly endeavors to force her, 
and at last releases her. 

Dcvmon. Woman, thou hast 

subdued me, 
Only by not owning thyself subdued. 
But since thou thus findest defence in 

God, 
I will assume a feigned form, and thus 
Make thee a victim of my baffled rage. 
For I will mask a spirit in thy form 
Who will betray thy name to infamy. 
And doubly shall I triumph in thy loss, 
First by dishonoring thee, and then by 

turning 
False pleasure to true ignominy. 

\_Exit. 
jftistina. I 

Appeal to Heaven against thee; so that 

Heaven 
May scatter thy delusions, and the blot 
Upon my fame vanish in idle thought, 
Even as flame dies in the envious air. 
And as the floweret wanes at morning 

frost, 
And thou shouldst never — But, alas ! to 

whom 
Do I still speak ? — Did not a man but 

now 
Stand here before me? — No, I am alone. 
And yet I saw him. Is he gone so 

quickly? 
Or can the heated mind engender shapes 
From its own fear? Some terrible and 

strange 
Peril is near. Lisander ! father ! lord ! 
Li via ! — 

Enter LiSANDER and LiviA. 
Lisander. Oh my daughter ! 

What? 
Livia. What? 

y list if! a. Saw you 

A man go forth from my apartment 

now? — 
I scarce contain myself ! 



A man here ! 
Have you not seen him? 

No, Lady. 
I saw him. 

'Tis impossible; the 



Lisander. 
ynstina. 
Livia. 
yustina. 
Lisander. 
doors 

Which led to this apartment were all 
lockt. 
Livia (aside). I dare say it was Mos- 
con whom she saw, 
For he was lockt up in my room. 

Lisander. It must 

Have been some image of thy fantasy. 
Such melancholy as thou feedest is 
Skilful in forming such in the vain air 
Out of the motes and atoms of the 
day. 
Livia. My master 's in the right. 
ynstina. Oh would it were 

Delusion; but I fear some greater ill. 
I feel as if out of my bleeding bosom 
My heart was torn in fragments; ay, 
Some mortal spell is wrought against my 

frame ; 
So potent was the charm, that had not 

God 
Shielded my humble innocence from 

wrong, 
I should have sought my sorrow and my 

shame 
With willing steps. — Livia, quick, bring 

my cloak. 
For I must seek refuge from these ex- 
tremes 
Even in the temple of the highest God 
Where secretly the faithful worship. 
Livia. Here. 

yustina (putting on her cloak). In 
this, as in a shroud of snow, may I 
Quench the consuming fire in which 

I burn. 
Wasting away ! 

Lisander. And I will go with 

thee. 
Livia. When once I see them safe 
out of the house 
I shall breathe freely. 

yustina. So do I confide 

In thy just favor. Heaven ! 

Lisander. Let us go. 

yustina. Thine is the cause, great 
God ! turn for my sake. 
And for thine own, mercifully to me ! 



»l 



SCENES FROM THE FAUST OF GOETHE. 



<543 



SCENES FROM THE FAUST OF 
GOETHE. 

SCENE I. — Prologue in Heaven. 
Ilie Lord a7td the Host of Heaven. 
Enter three Archangels. 

Raphael. 

The sun makes music as of old 

Amid the rival spheres of Heaven, 
On its predestined circle rolled 

With thunder speed : the Angels even 
Draw strength from gazing on its glance, 

Though none its meaning fathom 
may : — 
The world's unwithered countenance 

Is bright as at creation's day. 

Gabriel. 

And swift and swift, with rapid light- 
ness. 

The adorned Earth spins silently, 
Alternating Elysian brightness 

With deep and dreadful night; the sea 
Foams in broed billows from the deep 

Up to the rocks, and rocks and ocean, 
Onward, with spheres which never sleep, 

Are hurried in eternal motion. 



Michael. 

And tempests in contention roar 

From land to sea, from sea to land; 
And, raging, weave a chain of power. 

Which girds the earth, as with a 
band. — 
A flashing desolation there. 

Flames before the thunder's way; 
But thy servants, Lord, revere 

The gentle changes of thy day. 



Chorus of the Three. 

The Angels draw strength from thy 
glance. 
Though no one comprehend thee 
may; — 



Thy world's unwithered countenance 
Is bright as on creation's day.i 

Enter Mephistopheles. 

Mephistopheles. As thou, O Lord, 
once more art kind enough 
To interest thyself in our affairs — 
And ask, " How goes it with you there 

below? " 
And as indulgently at other times 
Thou tookest not my visits in ill part, 
Thou seest me here once more among 

thy household. 
Tho' I should scandalize this company, 
You will excuse me if I do not talk 
In the high style which they think fash- 
ionable ; 
My pathos certainly would make you 

laugh too, 
Had you not long since given over 

laughing. 
Nothing know I to say of suns and 
worlds; 



^ Raphael. The sun sounds, according to an- 
cient custom, 
In the song of emulation of his brother-spheret. 
And its fore-written circle 
Fulfils with a step of thunder. 
Its countenance gives the Angels strength 
Though no one can fathont it. 
Tlie incredible high works 
Are excellent as at the first day. 

Gabriel. And swift, and inconceivably swift 
The adornment of earth winds itself round, 
And exchanges Paradise-clearness 
With deep dreadful night. 
The sea foams in broad waves 
From its deep bottom, up to the rocks, 
And rocks and sea are torn on together 
In the eternal swift course of the spheres. 

Michael. And storms roar in emulation 
From sea to land, frum land to sea, 
And make, raging, a chain 
Of deepest operation round about. 
There flames a t^iashing destruction 
Before the path of the thunderbolt. 
But thy servants. Lord, revere 
The gentle alternations of thy day. 

Chorus. Thy countenance gives the Angels 
strength. 
Though none can comprehend thee : 
And ail thy lofty works 
Are excellent as at the first day. 

Such is a literal translation of this astonishing 
chorus ; it is impossible to represent in another 
language the melody of the versification ; even 
the volatile strength and delicacy of the ideas 
escape in the crucible of translation, and the 
reader is surprised to find a caput mortuum. 



644 



TRANSLA TIONS. 



I observe only how men plague them- 
selves; — 

The little god o' the world keeps the 
same stamp, 

As wonderful as on creation's day: — 

A little better would he live, hadst thou 

Not given him a glimpse of Heaven's 
light 

Which he calls reason, and employs it 
only 

To live more beastly than any beast. 

With reverence to your Lordship be it 
spoken. 

He's like one of those long-legged grass- 
hoppers. 

Who flits and jumps about, and sings 
for ever 

The same old song i' the grass. There 
let him lie, 

Burying his nose in every heap of dung. 
The Lord. Have you no more to 
say? Do you come here 

Always to scold, and cavil, and com- 
plain? 

Seems nothing ever right to you on 
earth? 
Mephistopheles, No, Lord ! I find all 
there, as ever, bad at best. 

Even I am sorry for man's days of sor- 
row; 

I could myself almost give up the 
pleasure 

Of plaguing the poor things. 

The Lord. Knowest thou Faust ! 

Mephistopheles. The Doctor? 
The Lord. Ay; my servant Faust. 
Mephistopheles. In truth 

He serves you in a fashion quite his own; 

And the fool's meat and drink are not of 
earth. 

His aspirations bear him on so far 

That he is half aware of his own folly. 

For he demands from Heaven its fairest 
star, 

And from the earth the highest joy it 
bears, 

Yet all things far, and all things near, 
are vain 

To calm the deep emotions of his breast. 
The Lord. Tho' he now serves me in 
a cloud of error, 

I will soon lead him forth to the clear 
day. 



When trees look green full well the gar- 
dener knows 
That fruits and blooms will deck the 

coming year. 
Mephistopheles. What will you bet 

— now I am sure of winning — 
Only, observe you give me full per- 
mission 
To lead him softly on my path. 

The Lord. As long 

As he shall live upon the earth, so long 
Is nothing unto thee forbidden — Man 
Must err till he has ceased to struggle. 

Alephistopheles. Thanks. 

And that is all I ask; for willingly 
I never make acquaintance with the 

dead. 
The full fresh cheeks of youth are food 

for me. 
And if a corpse knocks, I am not at 

home. 
For I am like a cat — I like to play 
A little with the mouse before I eat it. 
The Lord. Well, well ! it is permitted 

thee. Draw thou 
His spirit from its springs; as thou find'st 

power, 
Seize him and lead him on thy downward 

path; 
And stand ashamed when failure teaches 

thee 
That a good man, even in his darkest 

longings. 
Is well aware of the right way. 

Mephistopheles. Well and good. 

I am not in much doubt about my bet, 
And if I lose, then 't is your turn to 

crow; 
Enjoy your triumph then with a full 

breast. 
Ay; dust shall he devour, and that with 

pleasure. 
Like my old paramour, the famous Snake. 
The Lord. Pray come here when it 

suits you; for I never 
Had much dislike for people of your 

sort. 
And, among all the Spirits who rebelled. 
The knave was ever the least tedious 

to me. 
The active spirit of man soon sleeps, and 

soon 
He seeks unbroken quiet; therefore I 



SCENES FROM THE FAUST OF GOETHE. 



64s 



Have given him the Devil for a com- 
panion, 
Who may provoke him to some sort of 

work, 
And must create for ever. — But ye, pure 
Children of God, enjoy eternal beauty; — 
Let that which ever operates and lives 
Clasp you within the limits of its love; 
And seize with sweet and melancholy 

thoughts 
The floating phantoms of its loveliness. 
\_Heaven closes ; the Archangels exeunt. 
Alephistopheles. From time to time I 
visit the old fellow, 
And I take care to keep on good terms 

with him. 
Civil enough is the same God Almighty, 
To talk so freely with the Devil himself. 



SCENE II. — May-day Night. 

Scene. — The Hartz Mountain^ a deso- 
late Country. 

Faust, Mephistopheles. 

Mephistopheles. Would you not like 

a broomstick? As for me 
I wish I had a good stout ram to ride; 
For we are still far from the appointed 

place. 
Faust. This knotted staff is help 

enough for me, 
Whilst I feel fresh upon my legs. What 

good 
Is there in making short a pleasant way? 
To creep along the labyrinths of the 

vales. 
And climb those rocks where ever-bab- 
bling springs. 
Precipitate themselves in waterfalls. 
Is the true sport that seasons such a path. 
Already Spring kindles the birchen spray. 
And the hoar pines already feel her 

breath : 
Shall she not work also within our 

limbs ! 
Mephistopheles. Nothing of such an 

influence do I feel. 
My body is all wintry, and I wish 
The flowers upon our path were frost 

and snow. 



But see how melancholy rises now. 

Dimly uplifting her belated beam, 

The blank unwelcome round of the red 
moon, 

And gives so bad a light, that every step 

One stumbles 'gainst some crag. With 
your permission, 

I '11 call an Ignis-fatuus to our aid: 

I see one yonder burning jollily. 

Halloo, my friend ! may I request that 
you 

Would favor us with your bright com- 
pany? 

Why should you blaze away there to no 
purpose ? 

Pray be so good as light us up this way. 
Ignis-fatztus. With reverence be it 
spoken, I will try 

To overcome the lightness of my nature: 

Our course, you know, is generally zig- 
zag. 
iMephistopheles. Ha, ha ! your wor- 
ship thinks you have to deal 

With men. Go straight on, in the 
Devil's name, 

Or I shall puff your flickering life out. 
Ignis-fatuus. Well, 

I see you are the master of the house; 

I will accommodate myself to you. 

Only consider that to-night this moun- 
tain 

Is all enchanted, and if a Jack-a-lantern 

Shows you his way, tho' you should miss 
your own, 

You ought not to be too exact with him. 

Faust, Mephistopheles, atid Ignis- 
fatuus, in alternate Chorus. 

The limits of the sphere of dream, 
The bounds of true and false, are past. 

Lead us on, thou wandering Gleam, 
Lead us onward, far and fast, 
To the wide, the desert waste. 

But see, how swift advance and shift 

Trees behind trees, row by row, — 
How, clift by clift, rocks bend and lift 

Their frowning foreheads as we go. 

The giant-snouted crags, ho ! ho ! 

How they snort, and how they 
blow ! 



646 



TRANSLA TIONS. 



Thro' the mossy sods and stones, 

Stream and streamlet hurry down — 

A rushing throng ! A sound of song 
Beneath the vault of Heaven is blown ! 
Sweet notes of love, the speaking tones 
Of this bright day, sent down to say 
That Paradise on Earth is known, 
Resound around, beneath, above. 
All we hope and all we love 
Finds a voice in this blithe strain. 

Which wakens hill and wood and rill, 
And vibrates far o'er field and vale, 
And which Echo, like the tale 
Of old times, repeats again. 

To-whoo ! to-whoo ! near, nearer now 
The sound of song, the rushing throng ! 
Are the screech, the lapwing, and the 

jay, 

All awake as if 't were day? 

See, with long legs and belly wide, 

A salamander in the brake ! 

Every root is like a snake, 
And along the loose hillside. 
With strange contortions thro' the night. 
Curls, to seize or to affright; 
And, animated, strong, and many, 
They dart forth polypus-antennae, 
To blister with their poison spume 
The wanderer. Thro' the dazzling gloom 
The many-colored mice, that thread 
The dewy turf beneath our tread. 
In troops each other's motions cross, 
Thro' the heath and thro' the moss; 
And, in legions intertangled, 

The fire-flies flit, and swarm, and 
throng, 
Till all the mountain depths are spangled. 

Tell me, shall we go or stay? 

Shall we onward? Come along ! 
Everything around is swept 
Forward, onward, far away ! 
Trees and masses intercept 
The sight, and wisps on every side 
Are puffed up and multiplied. 

Mephislopheles. Now vigorously seize 
my skirt, and gain 
This pinnacle of isolated crag. 
One may observe with wonder from this 

point. 
How Mammon glows among the moun- 
tains. 



Faust. Ay — 

And strangely thro' the solid depth j 

below I 

A melancholy light, like the red dawn. 
Shoots from the lowest gorge of the 

abyss 
Of mountains, lightning hitherward: \ 

there rise 
Pillars of smoke, here clouds float gently ' 

by; 
Here the light burns soft as the enkindled 

air. 
Or the illumined dust of golden flowers; 
And now it glides like tender colors 

spreading; 
And now bursts forth in fountains from 

the earth; 
And now it winds, one torrent of broad 

light, 
Thro' the far valley with a hundred 

veins; 
And now once more within that narrow 

corner 
Masses itself into intensest splendor. 
And near us, see, sparks spring out of 

the ground. 
Like golden sand scattered upon the 

darkness; 
The pinnacles of that black wall of 

mountains 
That hems us in are kindled. 

Mephisfopheles. Rare: in faith ! 

Does not Sir Mammon gloriously illu- 
minate 
His palace for this festival — it is 
A pleasure which you had not known 

before. ■! 

I spy the boisterous guests already. T 

Faust. How 

The children of the wind rage in the air ! 
With what fierce strokes they fall upon 

my neck ! 

Mephistopheles. , 

Cling tightly to the old ribs of the cragP I 
Beware ! for if with them thou 
warrest 
In their fierce flight towards the 
wilderness. 
Their breath will sweep thee into dust, 
and drag 
Thy body to a grave in the abyss. 
A cloud thickens the night. 



SCENES FROM THE FAUST OF GOETHE. 



647 



Hark ! how the tempest crashes 
thro' the forest ! 
The owls fly out in strange 
affright; 
The columns of the evergreen palaces 
Are split and shattered; 
The roots creak, and stretch, and 

groan; 
And ruinously overthrown, 

The trunks are crusht and shattered 
By the fierce blast's unconquerable 

stress. 
Over each other crack and crash they all 
In terrible and intertangled fall; 
And thro' the ruins of the shaken moun- 
tain 
The airs hiss and howl — 
It is not the voice of the fountain. 
Nor the wolf in his midnight prowl. 
Dost thou not hear? 

Strange accents are ringing 
Aloft, afar, anear? 

The witches are singing ! 
The torrent of a raging wizard song 
Streams the whole mountain along. 

Chorus of Witches. 

The stubble is yellow, the corn is green, 

Now to the Brocken the witches go; 
The mighty multitude here may be seen 

Gathering, wizard and witch, below. 
Sir Urian is sitting aloft in the air; 

Hey over stock ! and hey over stone ! 

'Twixt witches and incubi, what shall 
be done? 
Tell it who dare ! tell it who dare ! 

A Voice. 

Upon a sow-swine, whose farrows were 
nine. 
Old Baubo rideth alone. 

Chorus. 

Honor her, to whom honor is due. 
Old mother Baubo, honor to you ! 
An able sow, with old Baubo upon her. 
Is worthy of glory, and worthy of honor ! 
The legion of witches is coming behind. 
Darkening the night, and outspeeding 
the wind — 

A Voice. 
Which way comest thou? 



A Voice. 

Over Ilsenstein; 
The owl was awake in the white moon- 
shine; 
I saw her at rest in her downy nest. 
And she stared at me with her broad, 
bright eyne. 

Voices. 

And you may now as well take your 
course on to Hell, 

Since you ride by so fast on the head- 
long blast. 

A Voice. 

She dropt poison upon me as I past. 
Here are the wounds — 

Chorus of ]Vitches. 

Come away ! come along ! 
The way is wide, the way is long. 
But what is that for a Bedlam throng? 
Stick with the prong, and scratch with 

the broom. 
The child in the cradle lies strangled at 

home. 
And the mother is clapping her hands. — 

Semichoriis of Wizards I. 

We glide in 

Like snails when the women are all 

away; 

And from a house once given over to 

sin 

Woman has a thousand steps to stray. 

Semichoriis II. 

A thousand steps must a woman take 
W^here a man but a single spring will 
make. 

Voices above. 

Come with us, come with us, from 
Felsensee. 

Voices below. 

With what joy would we fly thro' the 

upper sky ! 
We are washed, we are 'nointed, stark 

naked are we; 
But our toil and our pain are for ever 

in vain. 



f548 



TRANSLA TIONS. 



Both Choruses. 
The wind is still, the stars are fled, 
The melancholy moon is dead; 
The magic notes, like spark on spark, 
Drizzle, whistling thro' the dark. 
Come away ! 

Voices below. 
Stay, oh stay ! 

Voices above. 
Out of the crannies of the rocks, 
Who calls? 

Voices belotv. 

Oh, let me join your flocks ! 
I, three hundred years have striven 
To catch your skirt and mount to 

Heaven, — 
And still in vain. Oh, might I be 
With company akin to me ! 

Both Choruses. 
Some on a ram and some on a prong. 
On poles and on broomsticks we flutter 

along; 
Forlorn is the wight who can rise not 

to-night. 

A Half- IViich below. 

I have been tripping this many an hour : 
Are the others already so far before? 
No quiet at home, and no peace abroad ! 
And less methinks is found by the road. 

Chortis of Witches. 

Come onward, away ! aroint thee, aroint ! 
A witch to be strong must anoint — 

anoint — 
Then every trough will be boat enough; 
With a rag for a sail we can sweep thro' 

the sky, 
Who flies not to-night, when means he 

to fly? 

Both Choruses. 

We cling to the skirt, and we strike on 

the ground; 
Witch - legions thicken around and 

around; 
Wizard-swarms cover the heath all over. 

[ They descend. 

Meph istoph eles . 

What thronging, dashing, raging, rust- 
ling; 



What whispering, babbling, hissing, 

bustling; 
What glimmering, spurting, stinking, 

burning, 
As Heaven and Earth were overturning. 
There is a true witch element about us; 
Take hold on me, or we shall be 

divided : — 
Where are you? 

Faust (^frofn a distance^. Here ! 
Mephistopheles. What ! 

I must exert my authority in the house. 
Place for young Voland ! pray make 

way, good people. 
Take hold on me, doctor, and with one 

step 
Let us escape from this unpleasant 

crowd : 
They are too mad for people of my sort. 
Just there shines a peculiar kind of 

light — 
Something attracts me in those bushes. 

Come 
This way: we shall slip down there in a 

minute. 
Faust. Spirit of Contradiction ! Well, 

lead on — 
'T were a wise feat indeed to wander 

out 
Into the Brocken upon May-day night, 
And then to isolate oneself in scorn. 
Disgusted with the humors of the time. 
Mephistopheles. See yonder, round a 

many- colored flame 
A merry club is huddled all together : 
Even with such little people as sit there 
One would not be alone. 

Faust. Would that I were 

Up yonder in the glow and whirling 

smoke, 
Where the blind million rush impetu- 
ously 
To meet the evil ones; there might I 

solve 
Many a riddle that torments me ! 

Mephistopheles. Yet 

Many a riddle there .is tied anew 
Inextricably. Let the great world 

rage ! 
We will stay here safe in the quiet dwell^ ] 

ings. ' 

'T is an old custom. Men have ever 

built 



SCENES EROM THE EAUST OE GOETHE. 



649 



Their own small world in the great world 

of all. 
I see young witches naked there, and 

old ones 
Wisely attired with greater decency. 
Be guided now by me, and you shall 

buy 
A pound of pleasure with a dram of 

trouble. 
I hear them tune their instruments — one 

must 
Get used to this damned scraping. 

Come, I'll lead you 
Among them; and what there you do 

and see, 
As a fresh compact 'twixt us two shall 

be. 
How say you now? this space is wide 

enough — 
Look forth, you cannot see the end of 

it — 
A hundred bonfires burn in rows, and 

they 
Who throng around them seem innum- 
erable : 
Dancing and drinking, jabbering, making 

love. 
And cooking, are at work. Now tell 

me, friend, 
What is there better in the world than 

this? 
Faust. In introducing us, do you 

assume 
The character of wizard or of devil? 
Mephistopheles. In truth, I generally 

go about 
In strict incognito; and yet one likes 
To wear one's orders upon gala days. 
I have no ribbon at my knee; but 

here 
At home, the cloven foot is honorable. 
See you that snail there? — she comes 

creeping up. 
And with her feeling eyes hath smelt out 

something. 
I could not, if I would, mask myself 

here. 
Come now, we '11 go about from fire to 

fire : 
I'll be the pimp, and you shall be the 

lover. 
[ To some old IVomen, 7vho are sitting 

round a heap of glimmering coals. 



Old gentlewomen, what do you do out 

here? 
You ought to be with the young rioters 
Right in the thickest of the revelry — 
But every one is best content at home. 

General. 

Who dare confide in right or a just 
claim ? 
So much as I have done for them ! 
and now — 
With women and the people 't is the 
same, 
Youth will stand foremost ever, — age 
may go 
To the dark grave unhonored. 

Minister. 

Nowadays 
People assert their rights : they go too 
far; 
But as for me, the good old times I 
praise; 
Then we were all in all, 't was 
something worth 
One's while to be in place and wear 
a star; 
That was indeed the golden age on 
earth. 

Parvenu. 
We too are active, and we did and do 
What we ought not, perhaps; and yet 

we now 
Will seize, whilst all things are whirled 

round and round, 
A spoke of Fortune's wheel, and keep 
our ground. 

A uthor. 

Who now can taste a treatise of deep 
sense 

And ponderous volume? 't is imperti- 
nence 

To write what none will read, therefore 
will I 

To please the young and thoughtless 
people try. 
Mephistopheles {who at once appears 
to have grozun very old). I find 
the people ripe for the last day, 

Since I last came up to the wizard moun- 
tain; 

And as my little cask runs turbid now. 

So is the world drained to the dregs. 



65© 



TRANSLA TIONS. 



Pedlar-ivitch. Look here, 

Gentlemen; do not hurry on so fast 

And lose the chance of a good penny- 
worth. • 

I have a pack full of the choicest wares 

Of every sort, and yet in all my bundle 

Is nothing like what may be found on 
earth; 

Nothing that in a moment will make 
rich 

Men and the world with fine malicious 
mischief — 

There is no dagger drunk with blood; no 
bowl 

From which consuming poison may be 
drained 

By innocent and healthy lips; no jewel, 

The price of an abandoned maiden's 
shame ; 

No sword which cuts the bond it cannot 
loose. 

Or stabs the wearer's enemy in the back; 

No 

Mephistopheles. Gossip, you 

know little of these times. 

What has been, has been; what is done, 
is past. 

They shape themselves into the innova- 
tions 

They breed, and innovation drags us 
with it. 

The torrent of the crowd sweeps over us : 

You think to impel, and are yourself im- 
pelled. 
Faust. Who is that yonder? 
Mephistopheles. Mark her well. 

It is 

Lilith. 

Faust. Who? 

Mephistopheles. Lilith, the first 

wife of Adam. 

Beware of her fair hair, for she excels 

All women in the magic of her locks; 

And when she winds them round a young 
man's neck, 

She will n®t ever set him free again. 

Faust. 

There sit a girl and an old woman — 

they 
Seem to be tired with pleasure and with 

play. 



Mephistopheles. 

There is no rest to-night for any one: 
When one dance ends another is begun; 
Come, let us to it. We shall have rare 
fun. 
[Faust dances and sings with a girl 
a7id Mephistopheles with an old 
Woman. 

Faust. 

I had once a lovely dream 

In which I saw an apple tree, 

Where two fair apples with their gleam 
To climb and taste attracted me. 

The Girl. 

She with apples you desired 
From Paradise came long ago: 

W^ith you I feel that if required. 
Such still within my garden grow. 

Procto-Phantasmist. What is this 

cursed multitude about? 
Have we not long since proved to dem- 
onstration 
That ghosts move not on ordinary feet? 
But these are dancing just like men and 

women. 
The Girl. What does he want then 

at our ball? 
Faust. Oh ! he 

Is far above us all in his conceit : 
Whilst we enjoy, he reasons of enjoyment ; 
And any step which in our dance we 

tread. 
If it be left out of his reckoning, 
Is not to be considered as a step. 
There are few things that scandalize him 

not : 
And when you whirl round in the circle 

now. 
As he went round the wheel in his old 

mill. 
He says that you go wrong in all respects, 
Especially if you congratulate him 
Upon the strength of the resemblance. 

Procto-Phaiitasinist. Fly ! 

Vanish ! Unheard-of impudence ! What, 

still there ! 
In this enlightened age too, since you 

have been 



SCENES FROM THE FAUST OF GOETHE. 



651 



Proved not to exist ! — But this infernal 

brood 
Will hear no reason and endure no rule. 
Are we so wise, and is the pond still 

haunted? 
How long have I been sweeping out this 

rubbish 
Of superstition, and the world will not 
Come clean with all my pains ! — it is a 

case 
Unheard of ! 

The Girl. Then leave off 

teasing us so. 
Procto-Phanta s mist . I tell you, spirits, 

to your faces now, 
That I should not regret this despotism 
Of spirits, but that mine can wield it not. 
To-night I shall make poor work of it. 
Yet I will take a round with you, and 

hope 
Before my last step in the living dance 
To beat the poet and the devil together. 
Mephistopheles. At last he will sit 

down in some foul puddle; 
That is his way of solacing himself; 
Until some leech, diverted with his 

gravity. 
Cures him of spirits and the spirit to- 
gether. 
[ To Faust, ivho has seceded from the 

dance. 
Why do you let that fair girl pass from 

you. 
Who sang so sweetly to you in the dance ? 
Fciiist. A red mouse in the middle of 

her singing 
Sprang from her mouth. 

Mephistopheles. That was all 

right, my friend: 
Be it enough that the mouse was not 

gray. 
Do not disturb your hour of happiness 
With close consideration of such trifles. 

Faust. Then saw I 

Mephistopheles. What ? 

Faust. Seest thou not a pale. 

Fair girl, standing alone, far, far away? 
She drags herself now forward with slow 

steps. 
And seems as if she moved with shackled 

feet: 
I cannot overcome the thought that she 
Is like poor Margaret. 



Mephistopheles. Letit be — 

pass on — - 

No good can come of it — it is not 
well 

To meet it — it is an enchanted phan. 
torn, 

A lifeless idol; with its numbing 
look, 

It freezes up the blood of man; and 
they 

Who meet its ghastly stare are turned to 
stone, 

Like those who saw Medusa. 

Faust. Oh, too true ! 

Her eyes are like the eyes of a fresh 
corpse 

Which no beloved hand has closed, alas ! 

That is the breast which Margaret yielded 
to me — 

Those are the lovely limbs which I en- 
joyed ! 
Mephistopheles. It is all magic, poor 
deluded fool ! 

She looks to every one like his first 
love. 
Faust. Oh, what delight ! what woe ! 
I cannot turn 

My looks from her sweet piteous counte- 
nance. 

How strangely does a single blood-red 
line, 

Not broader than the sharp edge of a 
knife, 

Adorn her lovely neck ! 

Mephistopheles. Ay, she can carry 

Her head under her arm upon occa- 
sion ; 

Perseus has cut it off for her. These 
pleasures 

End in delusion. — Gain this rising 
ground. 

It is as airy here as in a . . . 

And if I am not mightily deceived, 

I see a theatre — What may this mean ! 
Attendant. Quite a new piece, the 
last of seven, for 't is 

The custom now to represent that num- 
ber. 

'T is written by a Dilettante, and 

The actors who perform are Dilettanti; 

Excuse me, gentlemen; but I must 
vanish., 

I am a Dilettante curtain-lifter. 



652 



JUVENILIA. 



JUVENILIA. 
VERSES ON A CAT. 



A CAT in distress, 

Nothing more, nor less; 
Good folks, I must faithfully tell ye, 

As I am a sinner. 

It waits for some dinner 
To stuff out its own little belly. 

II. 

You would not easily guess 
All the modes of distress 

Which torture the tenants of earth; 
And the various evils. 
Which like so many devils. 

Attend the poor souls from their birth. 

III. 

Some a living require, 

And others desire 
An old fellow out of the way; 

And which is the best 

I leave to be guessed. 
For I cannot pretend to say. 

IV. 

One wants society. 

Another variety. 
Others a tranquil life; 

Some want food, 

Others, as good. 
Only want a wife. 



But this poor little cat 

Only wanted a rat. 
To stuff out its own little maw; 

And it were as good 

Some people had such food. 
To make them hold their jaw ! 

FRAGMENT: OMENS. 

Hark ! the owlet flaps his wings 
In the pathless dell beneath; 

Hark ! 't is the night-raven sings 
Tidings of approaching death. 



EPITAPHIUM. 

[Latin Version of the Epitaph in 
Gray's Elegy.] 



Hic sinu fessum caput hospitali 
Cespitis dormit juvenis, nee illi 
Fata ridebant, popularis ille 

Nescius aurae. 



II. 



Musa non vultu genus arroganti 
Rustica natum grege despicata, 
Et suum tristis puerum notavit 

Sollicitudo, 

III. 

Indoles illi bene larga, pectus 
Veritas sedem sibi vindicavit, 
Et pari tantis meritis beavit 

Munere coelum. 

IV. 

Omne quod moestis habuit miserto 
Corde largivit lacrymam, recepit 
Omne quod coelo voluit, fidelis 

Pectus amici, 

V. 

Longius sed tu fuge curiosus 
Cseteras laudes fuge suspicari, 
Cseteras culpas fuge velle tractas 

Sede tremenda. 

VI. 

Spe tremescentes recubant in ilia 
Sede virtutes pariterque culpse, 
In sui Patris gremio, tremenda 

Sede Deique. 



IN HOROLOGIUM. 

Inter marmoreas Leonorse pendula 

colles 
Fortunata nimis Machina dicit horas. 
Quas tiiaiiibus premit ilia duas insensa 

papillas 
Cur mihi sit digifo tangere, amata, nefas? 



A DIALOGUE. 



653 



SONG FROM THE WANDERING 
JEW. 

Sbe yon opening flower 

Spreads its fragrance to the blast; 
It fades within an hour, 

Its decay is pale — is fast. 
Paler is yon maiden; 

Faster is her heart's decay; 
Deep with sorrow laden, 

She sinks in death away, 

FRAGMENT FROM THE 
WAKDERING JEW. 

The Elements respect their Maker's seal ! 

Still like the scathed pine tree's height, 

Braving the tempests of the night 
Have I 'scap'd the bickering flame. 
Like the scath'd pine, which a monu- 
ment stands 
Of faded grandeur, which the brands 

Of the tempest-shaken air 
Have riven on the desolate heath; 
Yet it stands majestic even in death. 

And rears its wild form there. 

A DIALOGUE. 

DEATH. 

For my dagger is bathed in the blood of 
the brave, 

I come, care-worn tenant of life, from 
the grave. 

Where Innocence sleeps 'neath the 
peace-giving sod. 

And the good cease to tremble at Tyr- 
anny's nod; 

I offer a calm habitation to thee, 

Say, victim of grief, wilt thou slumber 
with me? 

My mansion is damp, cold silence is 
there, 

But it lulls in oblivion the fiends of de- 
spair, 

Not a groan of regret, not a sigh, not a 
breath. 

Dares dispute wMth grim Silence the em- 
pire of Death. 



I offer a calm habitation to thee. 
Say, victim of grief, wilt thou slumber 
with me? 



MORTAL. 

Mine eyelids are heavy; my soul seeks 
repose, 

It longs in thy cells to embosom its woes, 

It longs in thy cells to deposit its load, 

Where no longer the scorpions of Perfidy 
goad; 

Where the phantoms of Prejudice vanish 
away. 

And Bigotry's bloodhounds lose scent of 
their prey; 

Vet tell me, dark Death, when thine em- 
pire is o'er. 

What awaits on Futurity's mist-covered 
shore ? 

DEATH. 

Cease, cease, wayward Mortal ! I dare 

not unveil 
The shadows that float o'er Eternity's 

vale; 
Naught waits for the good but a spirit 

of Love, 
That will hail their blest advent to 

regions above. 
For Love, Mortal, gleams thro' the 

gloom of my sway. 
And the shades which surround me fly 

fast at its ray. 
Hast thou loved? — Then depart from 

these regions of hate. 
And in slumber with me blunt the 

arrows of fate. 
I offer a calm habitation to thee. 
Say, victim of grief, wilt thou slumber 

with me? 

MORTAL. 

Oh, sweet is thy slumber ! oh ! sweet is 

the ray 
Which after thy night introduces the 

day; 
How concealed, how persuasive, self- 
interest's breath, 
Tho' it floats to mine ear from the 

bosom of Death ! 



654 



yUVENTLTA. 



I hoped that I quite was forgotten by 

all, 
Yet a lingering friend might be grieved 

at my fall, 
And duty forbids, tho' I languish to 

die, 
When departure might heave Virtue's 

breast with a sigh. 
O Death ! O my friend ! snatch this form 

to thy shrine. 
And I fear, dear destroyer, I shall not 

repine. 

TO THE MOONBEAM. 



Moonbeam, leave the shadowy vale. 

To bathe this burning brow. 
Moonbeam, why art thou so pale. 
As thou walkest o'er the dewy dale. 
Where humble wild-flowers grow? 
Is it to mimic me? 
But that can never be ; 
For thine orb is bright. 
And the clouds are light. 
That at intervals shadow the star-studded 
night. 

II. 

Now all is deathly still on earth, 

Nature's tired frame reposes, 
And ere the golden morning's birth 
Its radiant hues discloses, 

Flies forth its balmy breath. 
But mine is the midnight of 

Death, 
And Nature's morn. 
To my bosom forlorn. 
Brings but a gloomier night, implants a 
deadlier thorn. 

III. 

Wretch ! Suppress the glare of mad- 
ness 
Struggling in thine haggard eye. 
For the keenest throb of sadness, 
Pale Despair's most sickening sigh, 
Is but to mimic me; 
And this must ever be. 
When the twilight of care, 
And the night of despair, 
Seem in my breast but joys to the pangs 
that rankle there. 



THE SOLITARY. 



Dar'st thou amid the varied multitude 
To live alone, an isolated thing? 
To see the busy beings round thet 
spring 
And care for none; in thy calm solitude, 
A flower that scarce breathes in the 
desert rude 

To Zephyr's passing wing? 

II. 

Not the swart Pariah in some Indian 
grove, 
Lone, lean, and hunted by his brother's 

hate. 
Hath drunk so deep the cup of bitter 
fate 
As that poor wretch who cannot, cannot 

love: 
He bears a load which nothing can 
remove, 

A killing, withering weight. 

III. 
He smiles — 't is sorrow's deadliest 
mockery; 
He speaks — the cold words flow not 

from his soul; 
He acts like others, drains the genial 
bowl, — 
Yet, yet he longs — altho' he fears — to 

die; 
He pants to reach what yet he seems to 

fly, 

Dull life's extremes! goal. 

TO DEATH. 

Death ! where is thy victory? 
To triumph whilst I die, 
To triumph whilst thine ebon wing 

Infolds my shuddering soul. 
O Death ! where is thy sting? 

Not when the tides of murder roll, 
When nations groan, that kings may 

bask in bliss. 
Death ! canst thou boast a victory such 
as this? 
When in his hour of pomp and power 



LOVE'S ROSE. 



655 



His blow the mightiest murderer 

gave, 
Mid nature's cries the sacrifice 
Of millions to glut the grave; 
When sunk the tyrant desolation's slave; 
Or Freedom's life-blood streamed upon 

thy shrine; 
Sterp tyrant, couldst thou boast a vic- 
tory such as mine? 

To know in dissolution's void. 

That mortals' baubles sunk, decay. 
That everything, but Love, destroyed 
Must perish with its kindred clay. 
Perish Ambition's crown, 
Perish her sceptred sway; 
From Death's pale front fades Pride's 

fastidious frown. 
In Death's damp vault the lurid fires 

decay. 
That Envy lights at heaven-born Virtue's 
beam — 
That all the cares subside. 
Which lurk beneath the tide 
Of life's unquiet stream. 
Yes ! this is victory ! 
And on yon rock, whose dark form 

glooms the sky. 
To stretch these pale limbs, when the 
soul is fled; 
To baffle the lean passions of their 
prey. 
To sleep within the palace of the dead ! 
Oh ! not the King, around whose daz- 
zling throne 
His countless courtiers mock the words 
they say, 
Triumphs amid the bud of glory blown. 
As I in this cold bed, and faint expiring 



groan 



Tremble, ye proud, whose grandeur 
mocks the woe, 
Which props the column of unnatural 
state. 
You the plainings faint and low, 
From misery's tortured soul that 
flow. 
Shall usher to your fate. 

Tremble, ye conquerors, at whose fell 

command 
The war-fiend riots o'er a peaceful land. 



You desolation's gory throng 
Shall bear from Victory along 
To that mysterious strand. 



LOVE'S ROSE. 



Hopes, that swell in youthful breasts, 

Live not thro' the waste of time? 
Love's rose a host of thorns invests; 

Cold, ungenial is the clime, 

Where its honors blow. 
Youth says. The purple flowers are 
mine. 

Which die the while they glow. 



II. 



Dear the boon to Fancy given, 

Retracted whilst it 's granted: 
Sweet the rose which lives in heaven, 

Altho' on earth 't is planted, 

Where its honors blow. 
While by earth's slaves the leaves are 
riven 

Which die the while they glow. 



III. 

Age cannot Love destroy, 

But perfidy can blast the flower, 
Even when in most unwary hour 
It blooms in Fancy's bower. 
Age cannot Love destroy. 
But perfidy can rend the shrine 
In which its vermeil splendors shine. 



EYES : A FRAGMENT. 

How eloquent are eyes ! 
Not the rapt poet's frenzied lay 
When the soul's wildest feelings stray 

Can speak so well as they. 

How eloquent are eyes ! 
Not music's most impassioned note 
On which love's warmest fervors float 

Like them bids rapture rise. 



656 



JUVENILIA. 



Love, look thus again, — 
That your look may light a waste of 

years. 
Darting the beam that conquers cares 

Thro' the cold shower of tears. 

Love, look thus again ! 



POEMS FROM ST. IRVYNE, OR 
THE ROSICRUCIAN. 



L — Victoria. 



I. 



'T WAS dead of the night, when I sat in 

my dwelling; 
One glimmering lamp was expiring 

and low; 
Around, the dark tide of the tempest 

was swelling, 
Along the wild mountains night-ravens 

were yelling, — 
They bodingly presaged destruction 

and woe. 

II. 

'T was then that I started ! — the wild 
storm was howling. 
Nought was seen, save the lightning, 
which danced in the sky; 
Above me, the crash of the thunder was 
rolling. 
And low, chilling murmurs, the blast 
wafted by. 

III. 

My heart sank within me — unheeded 
the war 
Of the battling clouds, on the moun- 
tain-tops, broke; — 

Unheeded the thunder-peal crasht in 
mine ear — 

This heart, hard as iron, is stranger to 
fear; 
But conscience in low, noiseless whis- 
pering spoke. 

IV. 

'T was then that her form on the whirl- 
wind upholding, 



The ghost of the murder'd Victoria 
strode; 
In her right hand, a shadowy shroud 
she was holding, 
She swiftly advanc'd to my lonesome 
abode. 

V. 

I wildly then call'd on the tempest t« 
bear m© — 



II. — "On the Dark Height 
OF Jura." 

I. 

Ghosts of the dead ! have I not heard 
your yelling 
Rise on the night-rolling breath of 
the blast, 
When o'er the dark ether the tempest is 
swelling. 
And on eddying whirlwind the thun- 
der-peal past? 

II. 

For oft have I stood on the dark height 
of Jura, 
Which frowns on the valley that opens 
beneath; 
Oft have I brav'd the chill night-tem- 
pest's fury. 
Whilst around me, I thought, echo'd 
murmurs of death. 

III. 

And now, whilst the winds of the moun- 
tain are howling, 
O father ! thy voice seems to strike 
on mine ear; 
In air whilst the tide of the night-storm 
is rolling. 
It breaks on the pause of the elements* 
jar. 

IV. 

On the wing of the whirlwind which 
roars o'er the mountain 
Perhaps rides the ghost of my sire 
who is dead; 



POEMS FROM ST. IRVYNE, OR THE ROSICRUCIAN. 657 



On the mist of the tempest which hangs 
o'er the fountain, 
Whilst a wreath of dark vapor en- 
circles his head. 

III. — Sister Rosa: A Ballad. 

I. 

The death-bell beats ! — 

The mountain repeats 
The echoing sound of the knell; 

And the dark monk now 

Wr»ps the cowl round his brow, 
As he sits in his lonely cell. 



And the cold hand of death 
Chills his shuddering breath, 

As he lists to the fearful lay 
Which the ghosts of the sky, 
As they sweep wildly by. 

Sing to departed day. 

And they sing of the hour 
When the stern fates had power 

To resolve Rosa's form to its clay. 



III. 



But that hour is past; 

And that hour was the last 
Of peace to the dark monk's brain. 

Bitter tears, from his eyes, gusht 
silent and fast; 
And he strove to suppress them in vain. 

IV. 

Then his fair cross of gold he dasht 
on the floor. 
When the death-knell struck on his ear. 

Delight is in store 

For her evermore; 
But for me is fate, horror, and fear. 

V. 

Then his eyes wildly roll'd, 

When the death-bell toli'd, 
And he raged in terrific woe. 

And he stampt on the ground, — 

But when ceast the sound. 
Tears again began to flow. 



VI 

And the ice of despair 
Chill'd the wild throb of care, 
And he sate in mute agony still; 

Till the night-stars shone thro' the 
cloudless air. 
And the pale moonbeam slept on the 
hill. 

VII. 

Then he knelt in his cell: — 

And the horrors of hell 
Were delights to his agonized pain. 

And he prayed to God to dissolve the 
spell. 
Which else must for ever remain. 



VIII. 

And in fervent prayer he knelt on the 
ground. 
Till the abbey bell struck One : 
His feverish blood ran chill at the 

sound : 
A voice hollow and horrible murmured 
around — 
"The term of thy penance is done ! " 



IX. 

Grew dark the night; 

The moonbeam bright 
Waxt faint on the mountain high; 

And, from the black hill, 

Went a voice cold and still, — - 
" Monk ! thou art free to die." 



X. 

Then he rose on his feet. 
And his heart loud did beat. 
And his limbs they were palsied with 
dread; 
Whilst the grave's clammy dew 
O'er his pale forehead grew; 
And he shuddered to sleep with the 
dead. 

XI. 

And the wild midnight storm 
Raved around his tall form, 



658 



JUVENILIA. 



As he sought the chapel's gloom: 
And the sunk grass did sigh 
To the wind, bleak and high, 

As he searcht for the new-made tomb. 



XII. 

And forms, dark and high, 

Seemed around him to fly, 
And mingle their yells with the blast : 

And on the dark wall 

Half-seen shadows did fall, 
As enhorrored he onward past. 

XIII. 

And the storm-fiend's wild rave 

O'er the new-made grave, 
And dread shadows, linger around. 

The Monk called on God his soul to 
save. 
And, in horror, sank on the ground. 

XIV. 

Then despair nerved his arm 

To dispel the charm, 
And he burst Rosa's cofTln asunder. 

And the fierce storm did swell 

More terrific and fell, 
And louder pealed the thunder. 



XV. 



And laught, in joy, the fiendish throng, 
Mixt with ghosts of the mouldering 
dead : 
And their grisly wings, as they floated 
along, 
Whistled in murmurs dread. 

XVI. 

And her skeleton form the dead Nun 
reared 
Which dript with the chill dew of 
hell. 
In her half-eaten eyeballs two pale 

flames appeared, 
And triumphant their gleam on the dark 
Monk glared. 
As he stood within the cell. 



XVII. 

And her lank hand lay on his shuddering 
brain; 
But each power was nerved by fear. — 
" I never, henceforth, may breathe 

again; 
Death now ends mine anguisht pain. — 
The grave yawns, — we meet there." 

xvrii. 

And her skeleton lungs did utter the 
sound, 
So deadly, so lone, and so fell. 
That in long vibrations shuddered the 

ground; 
And as the stern notes floated around, 
A deep groan was answered from hell. 



IV. — St. Irvyne's Tower. 

I. 

How swiftly thro' heaven's wide ex- 
panse 
Bright day's resplendent colors fade ! 
How sweetly does the moonbeam's 
glance 
With silver tint St. Irvyne's glade ! 

II. 

No cloud along the spangled air, 
Is borne upon the evening breeze; 

How solemn is the scene ! how fair 
The moonbeams rest upon the trees ! 

III. 

Yon dark grey turret glimmers white, 
Upon it sits the mournful owl; 

Along the stillness of the night. 
Her melancholy shriekings roll. 

IV. 

But not alone on Irvyne's tower. 

The silver moonbeam pours her ray; 

It gleams upon the ivied bower. 
It dances in the cascade's spray. 

V. 

** Ah ! why do darkening shades conceal 
The hour when man must cease to 
be? 



POEMS FROM ST. IRVYNE, OR THE ROSTCRUCIAN. 659 



Why may not human minds unveil 
The dim mists of futurity? 



VI. 



"The keenness of the world hath torn 
The heart which opens to its blast; 

Despised, neglected, and forlorn, 
Sinks the wretch in death at last." 



V. — Bereavement. 



How stern are the woes of the desolate 

mourner. 
As he bends in still grief o'er the 

hallowed bier. 
As enanguisht he turns from the laugh 

of the scorner, 
And drops, to perfection's remem- 
brance, a tear; 
When floods of despair down his pale 

cheek a^-e streaming. 
When no blissful hope on his bosom is 

beaming. 
Or, if lulled for awhile, soon he starts 

from his dreaming. 
And finds torn the soft ties to affection 

so dear. 

II. 

Ah ! when shall day dawn on the night 

of the grave, 
Or summer succeed to the winter of 

death ? 
Rest awhile, hapless victim, and Heaven 

will save 
The spirit, that faded away with the 

breath. 
Eternity points in its amaranth bower, 
Where no clouds of fate o'er the sweet 

prospect lower, 
Unspeakable pleasure, of goodness the 

dower, 
When woe fades away like the mist 

of the heath. 



VI. — The Drowned Lover. 



Ah ! faint are her limbs, and her foot- 
step is weary, 



Yet far must the desolate wanderer 
roam; 
Tho' the tempest is stern, and the moun- 
tain is dreary, 
She must quit at deep midnight her 
pitiless home. 
I see her swift foot dash the dew from 

the whortle, 
As she rapidly hastes to the green grove 

of myrtle; 
And I hear, as she wraps round her 
figure the kirtle, 
*' Stay thy boat on the lake, — dearest 
Henry, I come." 



High swelled in her bosom the throb of 

affection. 
As lightly her form bounded over the 

lea. 
And arose in her mind every dear recol- 
lection; 
" I come, dearest Henry, and wait 

but for thee." 
How sad, when dear hope every sorrow 

is soothing. 
When sympathy's swell the soft bosom 

is moving. 
And the mind the mild joys of affection 

is proving, 
Is the stern voice of fate that bids 

happiness flee ! 



III. 

Oh ! dark lowered the clouds on that 
horrible eve. 
And the moon dimly gleamed thro' the 
tempested air; 

Oh ! how could fond visions such soft- 
ness deceive? 
Oh ! bow could false hope rend a 
bosom so fair? 

Thy love's pallid corse the wild surges 
are laving. 

O'er his form the fierce swell of the tem- 
pest is raving; 

But, fear not, parting spirit; thy good- 
ness is saving, 
In eternity's bowers, a seat for thee 
there. 



66o 



JUVENILIA. 



POSTHUMOUS FRAGMENTS 
OF MARGARET NICHOL- 
SON. 

Being Poems found amongst the Papers 
of that noted Female who attempted 
the life of the King in 1786. Edited 
by John Fitzvictor. 

ADVERTISEMENT. 

The energy and native genius of these 
Fragments must be the only apology 
which the Editor can make for thus in- 
truding them on the public notice. The 
first I found with no title, and have left 
it so. It is intimately connected with 
the dearest interests of universal happi- 
ness; and much as we may deplore the 
fatal and enthusiastic tendency which 
the ideas of this poor female had ac- 
quired, we cannot fail to pay the tribute 
of unequivocal regret to the departed 
memory of genius, which, had it been 
rightly organized, would have made that 
intellect, which has since become the vic- 
tim of frenzy and despair, a most bril- 
liant ornament to society. 

In case the sale of these Fragments 
evinces that the public have any curiosity 
to be presented with a more copious col- 
lection of my unfortunate Aunt's poems, 
I have other papers in my possession 
which shall, in that case, be subjected to 
their notice. It may be supposed they 
require much arrangement; but I send 
the following to the press in the same 
state in which they came into my pos- 
session. J. Y. 

POSTHUMOUS FRAGMENTS. 

Ambition, power, and avarice, now have 
hurled 

Death, fate, and ruin, on a bleeding 
world. 

See ! on yon heath what countless vic- 
tims lie. 

Hark! what loud shrieks ascend thro' 
yonder sky; 



Tell then the cause, 'tis sure the aven- 
ger's rage 
Has swept these myriads from life's 

crowded stage : 
Hark to that groan, an anguisht hero 

dies. 
He shudders in death's latest agonies; 
Yet does a fleeting hectic iiush his 

cheek. 
Yet does his parting breath essay to 

speak — 
" Oh God ! my wife, my children, — 

Monarch, thou 
For whose support this fainting frame 

lies low; 
For whose support in distant lands I 

bleed. 
Let his friends' welfare be the warrior's 

meed. 
He hears me not — ah! no — kings can- 
not hear. 
For passion's voice has dulled their list- 
less ear. 
To thee, then, mighty God, I lift my 

moan. 
Thou wilt not scorn a suppliant's an- 
guisht groan. 
Oh ! now I die — but still is death's 

fierce pain — 
God hears my prayer — we meet, we 

meet again." 
He spake, reclined him on death's bloody 

bed. 
And with a parting groan his spirit fled. 
Oppressors of mankind to you we 

owe 
The baleful streams from whence these 

miseries flow; 
For you how many a mother weeps her 

son, 
Snatcht from life's course ere half his 

race was run ! 
For you how many a widow drops a 

tear. 
In silent anguish, on her husband's bier ! 
" Is it then thine. Almighty Power," 

she cries, 
" Whence tears of endless sorrow dim 

these eyes? 
Is this the system which thy powerful 

sway, 
Which else in shapeless chaos sleeping 

lay, 



I 



POSTHUMOUS FRAGMENTS OF MARGARET NICHOLSON. 661 



Formed and approved? — it cannot be — 

but oh ! 
Forgive me, Heaven, my brain is warpt 

by woe." 



Will level all and make them lose their 

sway; 
Will dash the sceptre from the Monarch's 

hand, 



'T is not — he never bade the war-note j And from the warrior's grasp wrest the 



swell, 

He never triumpht in the work of hell — 

Monarchs of earth ! thine is the baleful 
deed. 

Thine are the crimes for which thy sub- 
jects bleed. 

Ah ! when will come the sacred fated 
time. 

When man unsullied by his leaders' 
crime, 

Despising wealth, ambition, pomp, and 
pride, - 

Will stretch him fearless by his focman's 
side ? 

Ah ! when will come the time, when o'er 
the plain 

No more shall death and desolation 
reign? 

When will the sun smile on the blood- 
less field, 

And the stern warrior's arm the sickle 
wield? 

Not whilst some King, in cold ambi- 
tion's dreams, 

Plans for the field of death his plodding 
schemes; 

Not whilst for private pique the public 
fall, 

And one frail mortal's mandate governs 
all. 

Swelled with command and mad with 
dizzying sway; 

Who sees unmoved his myriads fade 
away. 

Careless who lives or dies — so that he 
gains 

Some trivial point for which he took the 
pains. 

What then are Kings? — I see the trem- 
bling crowd, 

I hear their fulsome clamors echoed 
loud; 

Their stern oppressor pleased appears 
awhile, 

But April's sunshine is a Monarch's 
smile — 

Kings are but dust — t"he last eventful 
day 



ensanguined brand. 
Oh ! Peace, soft peace, art thou for 

ever gone. 
Is thy fair form indeed for ever flown? 
And love and concord hast thou swept 

away, 
As if incongruous with thy parted 

sway ? 
Alas I fear thou hast, for none ap- 
pear. 
Now o'er the palsied earth stalks giant 

Fear, 
With W^'^r, and Woe, and Terror, in his 

train; 
Listening he pauses on the embattled 

plain. 
Then speeding swiftly o'er the ensan- 
guined heath, 
Has left the frightful work tt) hell and 

death. 
See ! gory Ruin yokes his blood-stained 

car, 
He scents the battle's carnage from afar; 
Hell and destruction mark his mad 

career, 
He tracks the rapid step of hurrying 

Fear ; 
Whilst ruined towns and smoking cities 

tell. 
That thy work. Monarch, is the work of 

hell. 
It is thy work ! I hear a voice repeat, 
Shakes the broad basis of thy blood- 
stained seat; 
And at the orphan's sigh, the widow's 

moan, 
Totters the fabric of thy guilt-stained 

throne — 
"It is thy work, O Monarch;" now 

the sound 
Fainter and fainter, yet is borne around. 
Yet to enthusiast ears the murmurs tell 
That heaven, indignant at the work of 

hell, 
Will soon the cause, the hated cause 

remove. 
Which tears from earth peace, innc 

cence, and love. 



662 



JUVENILIA. 



FRAGMENT. 

SUPPOSED TO BE AN EPITHALAMIUM 

OF FRANCIS RAVAILLAC AND 

CHARLOTTE CORd6. 

'T IS midnight now — athwart the murky 
air, 
Dank lurid meteors shoot a lurid 
gleam; 
From the dark storm-clouds flashes a 
fearful glare, 
It shows the bending oak, the roaring 
stream. 
I ponder'd on the woes of lost mankind, 
I ponder'd on the ceaseless rage of 
Kings; 
My rapt soul dwelt upon the ties that 
bind 
The mazy volume of commingling 
things. 
When fell and wild misrule to man stern 

sorrow brings. 
I heard a yell — it was not the knell, 
When the blasts on the wild lake 
sleep, 
That floats on the pause of the summer 
gale's swell. 
O'er the breast of the waveless deep. 

I thought it had been death's accents 
cold 
That bade me recline on the shore ; 
I laid mine hot head on the surge-beaten 
mould, 
And thought to breathe no more. 

But a heavenly sleep 
That did suddenly steep 

In balm my bosom's pain, 
Pervaded my soul. 
And free from control. 

Did mine intellect range again. 

Methought enthroned upon a silvery 
cloud. 
Which floated mid a strange and bril- 
liant light; 
My form upborne by viewless ether rode, 
And spurned the lessening realms of 
earthly night. 



What heavenly notes burst on my rav- 

isht ears, 
What beauteous spirits met my dazzled 

eye ! 
Hark ! louder swells the music of the 

spheres. 
More clear the forms of speechless 

bliss float by. 
And heavenly gestures suit ethereal 

melody. 

But fairer than the spirits of the air. 
More graceful than the sylph of sym- 
metry. 
Than the enthusiast's fancied love more 
fair. 
Were the bright forms that swept the 
azure sky. 
Enthroned in roseate light, a heavenly 
band 
Strewed flowers of bliss that never fade 
away; 
They welcome virtue to its native land. 
And songs of triumph greet the joyous 
day 
When endless bliss the woes of fleeting 
life repay. 

Congenial minds will seek their kindred 
soul. 
E'en tho' the tide of time has rolled 
. between; 
They mock weak matter's impotent con- 
trol. 
And seek of endless life the eternal 
scene. 
At death's vain summons this will never 
die. 
In nature's chaos this will not decay — 
These are the bands which closely, 
warmly, tie 
Thy soul, O Charlotte, 'yond this chain 
of clay. 
To him who thine must be till time shall 
fade away. 

Yes, Francis ! thine was the dear knife 
that tore 
A tyrant's heart-strings from his guilty 
br(M«t, 
Thine was the daring at a tyrant's gore, 
T© smile in triumph, to contemn the 
rest; 



DESPAIR. 



663 



And thine, loved glory of thy sex ! to 
tear 
From its base shrine a despot's haughty 
soul, 
To laugh at sorrow in secure despair, 
To mock, with smiles, life's lingering 
control, 
And triumph mid the griefs that roimd 
thy fate did roll. 

Yes ! the fierce spirits of the avenging 
deep 
With endless tortures goad their guilty 
shades. 
I see the lank and ghastly spectres 
sweep 
Along the burning length of yon 
arcades; 
And I see Satan stalk athwart the plain; 
He hastes along the burning soil of 
hell. 
"Welcome thou despots to my dark 
domain, 
With maddening joy mine anguisht 
senses swell 
To welcome to their homes the friends I 
love so well." 



Hark ! to those notes, how sweet, how 

thrilling sweet 
They echo to the sound of angels' feet. 



Oh haste to the bower where roses are 

spread. 
For there is prepared thy nuptial bed. 
Oh haste — hark ! hark ! — they 're gone. 



Chorus of Spirits, 

Stay ye days of contentment and joy, 
Whilst love every care is erasing. 

Stay ye pleasures that never can cloy. 
And ye spirits that can never cease 
pleasing. 

And if any soft passion be near. 

Which mortals, frail mortals, can 
know. 

Let love shed on the bosom a tear, 
And dissolve the chill ice-drop of woe. 



Symphony. 



Fra) 



*' Soft, my dearest angel stay, 
Oh ! you suck my soul away; 
Suck on, suck on, I glow, I glow ! 
Tides of maddening passion roll, 
And streams of rapture drown my soul. 
Now give me one more billing kiss. 
Let your lips now repeat the bliss, 
Endless kisses steal my breath, 
No life can equal such a death." 

Charlotte. 

Oh ! yes I will kiss thine eyes so fair, 

And I will clasp thy form; 
Serene is the breath of the balmy air. 

But I think, love, thou feelest me 
warm. 
And I will recline on thy marble neck 

Till I mingle into thee. 
And I will kiss the rose on thy cheek, 

And thou shalt give kisses to me. 
For here is no morn to flout our delight. 

Oh ! dost thou not joy at this? 
And here we may lie an endless night, 

A long, long night of bliss." 

Spirits ! when raptures move. 

Say what it is to love, 

When passion's tear stands on the cheek, 

When bursts the unconscious sigh; 
And the tremulous lips dare not speak 

What is told by the soul-felt eye. 
But what is sweeter to revenge's ear 
Than the fell tyrant's last expiring 
yell? 
Yes ! than love's sweetest blisses 't is 
more dear 
To drink the floatings of a despot's 
knell. 
I wake — 't is done — 't is o'er. 



DESPAIR. 

And canst thou mock mine agony, thus 
calm 
In cloudless radiance. Queen of silver 
night? 

Can you, ye flowerets, spread your per- 
fumed balm 



664 



yUVENILIA. 



Mid pearly gems of dew that shine so 
bright? 
And you wild winds, thus can you sleep 
so still 
Whilst throbs the tempest of my 
breast so high? 
Can the fierce night-fiends rest on yonder 
hill, 
And, in the eternal mansions of the 
sky, 
Can the directors of the storm in power- 
less silence lie? 

Hark! I hear music on the zephyr's 
wing. 
Louder it floats along the unruffled 
sky; 
Some fairy sure has touched the viewless 
string — 
Now faint in distant air the murmurs 
die, 
Awhile it stills the tide of agony. 

Now — now it loftier swells — again 
stern woe 
Arises with the awakening melody. 
Again fierce torments, such as demons 
know. 
In bitterer, feller tide, on this torn 
bosom flow. 

Arise ye sightless spirits of the storm, 
Ye unseen minstrels of the aerial 
song. 
Pour the fierce tide around this lonely 
form, 
And roll the tempest's wildest swell 
along. 
Dart the red lightning, wing the forked 
flash. 
Pour from thy cloud-formed hills the 
thunder's roar; 
Arouse the whirlwind — and let ocean 
dash 
In fiercest tumult on the rocking 
shore, 
Destroy this life or let earth's fabric be 
no more. 

Yes ! every tie that links me here is 

dead; 

Mysterious fate thy mandate I obey. 

Since hope and peace, and joy, for aye 

are fled, 

I come, terrific power, I come away. 



Then o'er this ruined soul let spirits of 
hell, 
In triumph, laughing wildly, mock its 
pain; 
And tho' with direst pangs mine heart- 
strings swell, 
I '11 echo back their deadly yells again. 
Cursing the power that ne'er made aught 
in vain. 

FRAGMENT. 

Yes ! all is past — swift time has fled 
away. 
Yet its swell pauses on my sickening 
mind; 
How long will horror nerve this frame 
of clay? 
I 'm dead, and lingers yet my soul 
behind. 
Oh ! powerful fate, revoke thy deadly 
spell. 
And yet that may not ever, ever be, 
Heaven will not smile upon the work of 
hell; 
Ah ! no, for heaven cannot smile on 
me; 
Fate, envious fate, has sealed my way- 
ward destiny. 

I sought the cold brink of the midnight 
surge, 
I sighed beneath its wave to hide my 
woes. 
The rising tempest sung a funeral dirge, 
And on the blast a frightful yell arose. 
Wild flew the meteors o'er the maddened 
main, 
Wilder did grief athwart my bosom 
glare; 
Stilled was the unearthly howling, and a 
strain. 
Swelled mid the tumult of the battling 
air, 
'T was like a spirit's song, but yet more 
soft and fair. 

I met a maniac; like he was to me, 
I said — " Poor victim wherefore dost 
thou roam? 
And canst thou not contend with agony. 
That thus at midnight thou dost quit 
thine home ? ' ' 



THE SPECTRAL HORSE MA AT. 



66s 



** Ah there she sleeps: cold is her blood- 
less form, 
And I will go to slumber in her 
grave; 

And then our ghosts, whilst raves the 
maddened storm, 
Will sweep at midnight o'er the 
wildered wave; 

Wilt thou our lowly beds with tears of 
pity lave? " 

"Ah! no, I cannot shed the pitying 
tear, 
This breast is cold, this heart can feel 
no more; 
But I can rest me on thy chilling bier, 
Can shriek in horror to the tempest's 
roar." 



THE SPECTRAL HORSEMAN. 

What was the shriek that struck fancy's 

ear 
As it sate on the ruins of time that is 

past ? 
Hark ! it floats on the fitful blast of the 

wind. 
And breathes to the pale moon a funeral 

sigh. 
It is the Benshic's moan on the storm, 
Or a shivering fiend that thirsting for 

sin, 
Seeks murder and guilt when virtue 

sleeps. 
Winged with the power of some ruthless 

king. 
And sweeps o'er the breast of the pros- 
trate plain. 
It was not a fiend from the regions of 

hell 
That poured its low moan on the still- 
ness of night : 
It was not a ghost of the guilty dead. 
Nor a yelling vampire reeking with 

gore; 
But aye at the close of seven years' 

end. 
That voice is mixt with the swell of the 

storm. 
And aye at the close of seven years' 

end, 



A shapeless shadow that sleeps on the 

hill 
Awakens and floats on the mist of the 

heath. 
It is not the shade of a murdered man. 
Who has rusht uncalled to the throne of 

his God, 
And howls in the pause of the eddying 

storm. 
This voice is low, cold, hollow, and 

chill, 
'T is not heard by the ear, but is felt in 

the soul. 
'T is more frightful far than the death- 
demon's scream. 
Or the laughter of fiends when they 

howl o'er the corpse 
Of a man who has sold his soul to hell. 
It tells the approach of a mystic form, 
A white courser bears the shadowy 

sprite; 
More thin they are than the mists of the 

mountain, 
When the clear moonlight sleeps on the 

waveless lake. 
More pale /lis cheek than the snows of 

Nilhona, 
When winter rides on the northern blast. 
And howls in the midst of the leafless 

wood. 
Vet when the fierce swell of the tempest 

is raving, 
And the whirlwinds howl in the caves 

of Inisfallen, 
Still secure mid the wildest war of the 

sky. 
The phantom courser scours the waste, 
And his rider howls in the thunder's 

roar. 
O'er him the fierce bolts of avenging 

heaven 
Pause, as in fear, to strike his head. 
The meteors of midnight recoil from his 

figure. 
Yet the wildered peasant that oft passes 

by, 
With wonder beholds the blue flash 

thro' his form : 
And his voice, tho' faint as the sighs of 

the dead. 
The startled passenger shudders to hear. 
More distinct than the thunder's wildest 

roar. 



666 



JUVENILIA. 



Then does the dragon, who chained in 

the caverns 
To eternity, curses the champion of 

Erin, 
Moan and yell loud at the lone hour of 

midnight, 
And twine his vast wreaths round the 

forms of the demons; 
Then in agony roll his death-swimming 

eyeballs, 
Though wildered by death, yet never to 

die! 
Then he shakes from his skeleton folds 

the nightmares. 
Who, shrieking in agony, seek the 

couch 
Of some fevered wretch who courts 

sleep in vain; 
Then the tombless ghosts of the guilty 

dead 
In horror pause on the fitful gale. 
They float on the swell of the eddying 

tempest. 
And scared seek the caves of gigan- 
tic .. . 
Where their thin forms pour unearthly 

sounds 
On the blast that sweeps the breast of 

the lake. 
And mingles its swell with the moon- 
light air. 



MELODY TO A SCENE OF 
FORMER TIMES. 

Art thou indeed for ever gone, 

For ever, ever, lost to me? 
Must this poor bosom beat alone, 

Or beat at all, if not for thee? 
Ah ! why was love to mortals given. 
To lift them to the height of heaven, 
Or dash them to the depths of hell? 

Yet I do not reproach thee, dear ! 
Ah ! no, the agonies that swell 

This panting breast, this frenzied 
brain 

Might wake my 's slumb'ring 

tear. 

Oh ! heaven is witness I did love, 
And heaven does know I love thee still, 
Does know the fruitless sickening thrill. 



When reason's judgment vainly strove 
To blot thee from my memory; 
But which might never, never be. 
Oh ! I appeal to that blest day 
When passion's wildest ecstasy 
Was coldness to the joys I knew, 
When every sorrow sunk away. 
Oh ! I had never liv'd before. 
But now those blisses are no more. 
And now I cease to live again, 
I do not blame thee, love; ah no ! 
The breast that feels this anguished woe 
Throbs for thy happiness alone. 
Two years of speechless bliss are gone, 
I thank thee dearest for the dream. 
'T is night — what faint and distant 

scream 
Comes on the wild and fitful blast? 
It moans for pleasures that are past, 
It moans for days that are gone by. 
Oh ! lagging hours how slow you fly ! 

I see a dark and lengthened vale. 
The black view closes with the tomb; 
But darker is the lowering gloom 

That shades the intervening dale. 
In visioned slumber for awhile 
I seem again to share thy smile, 
I seem to hang upon thy tone. 

Again you say, " Confide in me, 
For I am thine, and thine alone, 

And thine must ever, ever be." 
But oh ! awakening still anew. 
Athwart my enanguisht senses flew 

A fiercer, deadlier agony ! 



[End of Posthuinoxis Fragments of Margaret 
Nicholson.\ 



STANZA FROM A TRANSLA- 
TION OF THE MARSEIL- 
LAISE HYMN. 

Tremble Kings despised of man 

Ye traitors to your Country 
Tremble ! Your parricidal plan 

At length shall meet its destiny . . 
We all are soldiers fit to fight 
But if we sink in glory's night 
Our mother Earth will give ye new 
The brilliant pathway to pursue 

Which leads to Death or Victory. . 



I 



BIGOTRY'S VICTIM. 



667 



BIGOTRY'S VICTIM. 



Dares the lama, most fleet of the sons 
of the wind, 
The lion to rouse from his skull- 
covered lair? 
When the tiger approaches can the fast- 
fleeting hind 
Repose trust in his footsteps of air? 
No ! Abandoned he sinks in a trance of 
despair. 
The monster transfixes his prey, 
On the sand flows his life-blood 
away ; 
Whilst India's rocks to his death-yells 

reply, 
Protracting the horrible harmony. 

II. 

Yet the fowl of the desert, when danger 
encroaches. 
Dares fearless to perish defending her 
brood, 
Tho' the fiercest of cloud-piercing tyrants 
approaches, 
Thirsting — ay, thirsting for blood; 
And demands, like mankind, his brother 
for food; 
Yet more lenient, more gentle 

than they; 
For hunger, not glory, the prey 
Must perish. Revenge does not howl 

in the dead. 
Nor ambition with fame crown the 
murderer's head. 

III. 

Tho' weak, as the lama, that bounds on 
the mountains, 
And endued not with fast-fleeting foot- 
steps of air. 
Yet, yet will I draw from the purest of 
fountains, 
Tho' a fiercer than tiger is there. 
Tho' more dreadful than death, it scat- 
ters despair, 
Tho' its shadow eclipses the day, 
And the darkness of deepest dis- 
may 



Spreads the influence of soul- chilling 

terror around. 
And lowers on the corpses, that rot on 

the ground. 

IV. 

They came to the fountain to draw from 
its stream. 
Waves too pure, too celestial, for 
mortals to see ; 
They bathed for awhile in its silvery 
beam, 
Then perisht, and perisht like me. 
For in vain from the grasp of the Bigot 
I flee; 
The most tenderly loved of my 

soul 
Are slaves to his hated control. 
He pursues me, he blasts me! 'T is in 

vain that I fly : 
What remains, but to curse him, — to 
curse him and die? 



ON AN ICICLE THAT CLUNG 

TO THE GRASS OF A 

GRAVE. 

I. 

Oh ! take the pure gem to where south- 
erly breezes, 
Waft repose to some bosom as faithful 
as fair. 
In which the warm current of love never 
freezes. 
As it rises unmingled with selfishness 

there. 
Which, untainted by pride, unpolluted 
by care. 
Might dissolve the dim icedrop, might 

bid it arise. 
Too pure for these regions, to gleam in 
the skies. 

II. 

Or where the stern warrior, his country 

defending. 
Dares fearless the dark-rolling battle 

to pour. 
Or o'er the fell corpse of a dread tyrant 

bending. 



568 



JUVENILIA. 



Where patriotism red with his guilt- 
reeking gore 
Plants liberty's flag on the slave- 
peopled shore, 
With victory's cry, with the shout of the 

free, 
Let it fly, taintless spirit, to mingle with 
thee. 

III. 

For I found the pure gem, when the 
daybeam returning, 
Ineffectual gleams on the snow-covered 
plain. 
When to others the wisht-for arrival of 
morning 
Brings relief to long visions of soul- 
racking pain; 
But regret is an insult — to grieve is 
in vain : 
And why should we grieve that a spirit 

so fair 
Seeks Heaven to mix with its own kin- 
dred there? 

IV. 

But still 't was some spirit of kindness 
descending 
To share in the load of mortality's 
f. woe. 

Who over the lowly-built sepulchre 
bending 
Bade sympathy's tenderest teardrop to 

flow. 
Not for thee^ soft compassion, celes- 
tials did know. 
But if angels can weep, sure man may 

repine. 
May weep in mute grief o'er thy low- 
laid shrine. 



V. 

And did I then say, for the altar of 

glory. 

That the earliest, the loveliest of flow- 
ers I 'd entwine, 
Tho' with millions of blood-reeking vic- 
tims 't was gory, 

Tho' the tears of the widow polluted 
its shrine, 

Tho' around it the orphans, the father- 
less pine ? 



Oh ! Fame, all thy glories I'd yield for a 

tear 
To shed on the grave of a heart so 

sincere. 

LOVE. 

Why is it said thou canst not live 

In a youthful breast and fair, 
Since thou eternal life canst give, 

Canst bloom for ever there? 
Since withering pain no power possest. 

Nor age, to blanch thy vermeil hue. 
Nor time's dread victor, death, contest, 

Tho' bathed with his poison dew. 
Still thou retain'st unchanging bloom, 
Fixt tranquil, even in the tomb. 
And oh ! when on the blest reviving 

The day-star dawns of love. 
Each energy of soul surviving 

More vivid, soars above, 
Hast thou ne'er felt a rapturous thrill, 

Like June's warm breath, athwart thee 

fly,. 

O'er each idea then to steal, 

When other passions die? 
Felt it in some wild noonday dream. 
When sitting by the lonely stream, 
Where Silence says, " Mine is the dell;" 

And not a murmur from the plain, 
And not an echo from the fell, 

Disputes her silent reign. 

ON A FETE AT CARLTON 
HOUSE: FRAGMENT. 

By the mossy brink. 
With me the Prince shall sit and think; 
Shall muse in visioned Regency, 
Rapt in bright dreams of dawning 
Royalty. 

TO A STAR. 

Sweet star, which gleaming o'er the 

darksome scene 
Thro' fleecy clouds of silvery radiance 

fliest, 
Spanglet of light on evening's shadowy 

veil. 
Which shrouds the day-beam from the 

waveless lake. 
Lighting the hour of sacred love; more 

sweet 



TO MARY, WHO DIED IN THIS OPINION. 



669 



Than the expiring morn-star's paly fires. 
Sweet star ! When wearied Nature 

sinks to sleep, 
And all is husht, — all, save the voice of 

Love, 
Whose broken murmurings swell the 

balmy blast 
Of soft Favonius, which at intervals 
Sighs in the ear of stillness, art thou 

aught but 
Lulling the slaves of interest to repose 
With that mild, pitying gaze! Oh, I 

would look 
In thy dear beam till every bond of 

sense 
Became enamoured — 



TO MARY, WHO DIED IN THIS 
OPINION. 

I. 

Maidkn, quench the glare of sorrow 
Struggling in tliine haggard eye : 

Firmness dare to borrow 
From the wreck of destiny: 

For the ray morn's bloom revealing 

Can never boast so bright an hue 
As that which mocks concealing, 

And sheds its loveliest light on you. 

II. 

Yet is the tie departed 
Which bound thy lovely soul to bliss? 

Has it left thee broken-hearted 
In a world so coUl as this ! 

Yet, tho', fainting fair one, 
Sorrow's self thy cup has given, 

Dream thou'lt meet thy dear one. 
Never more to part, in heaven. 

III. 

Existence would I barter 
For a dream so dear as thine. 
And smile to die a martyr 
On affection's bloodless shrine. 

Nor would I change for pleasure 
That withered hand and ashy cheek, 

If my heart enshrined a treasure 
Such as forces thine to break. 



A TALE OF SOCIETY AS IT IS: 
FROM FACTS, 181 1. 

I. 

She was an aged woman; and the years 
Which she had numbered on her toil- 
some way 
Had bowed her natural powers to 

decay. 
She was an aged woman; yet the ray 
Which faintly glimmered thro' her start- 
ing tears, 
Prest into light by silent misery. 
Hath soul's imperishable energy. 

She was a cripple, and incapable 
To add one mite to gold-fed luxury: 
And therefore did her spirit dimly 

feel 
That poverty, the crime of tainting 
stain. 
Would merge her in its depths, never to 
rise again. 



One only son's love had supported her. 
She long had struggled with in- 
firmity, 
Lingering to human life-scenes; for 

to die. 
When fate has spared to rend some 
mental tie, 
Would many wish, and surely fewer 

dare. 
But, when the tyrant's bloodhounds 

forced the child 
For his cursed power unhallowed arms 
to wield — 
Bend to another's will — become a 
thing 
More senseless than the sword of 
battlefield — 
Then did she feel keen sorrow's 
keenest sting; 
And many years had past ere comfort 
they would bring. 

III. 

For seven years did this poor woman 
live 
In unparticipated solitude. 



670 



JUVENILIA. 



Thou mightst have seen her in the 

forest rude 
Picking the scattered remnants of 
its wood. 
If human, thou mightst then have 

learned to grieve. 
The gleanings of precarious charity 
Her scantiness of food did scarce 
supply. 
The proofs of an unspeaking sorrow 
dwelt 
Within her ghastly hollowness of eye: 
Each arrow of the season's change 
she felt. 
Yet still she groans, ere yet her race 
were run, 
One only hope: it was — once more to 
see her son. 

IV. 

It was an eve of June, when every star 
Spoke peace from heaven to those 

on earth that live. 
She rested on the moor. 'T was 

such an eve 
When first her soul began indeed to 
grieve: 
Then he was here ; now he is very far. 
The sweetness of the balmy evening 
A sorrow o'er her aged soul did fling, 
Yet not devoid of rapture's mingled 
tear : 
A balm was in the poison of the sting. 

This aged sufferer for many a year 
Had never felt such comfort. She 
supprest 
A sigh — and turning round, claspt Wil- 
liam to her breast ! 

V. 

And, tho' his form was wasted by 
the woe 
Which tyrants on their victims love 

to wreak, 
The' his sunk eyeballs and his faded 

cheek 
Of slavery's violence and scorn did 
speak, 
Yet did the aged woman's bosom 

glow. 
The vital fire seemed reillumed within 
By this sweet unexpected welcoming. 



O, consummation of the fondest 
hope 
That ever soared on fancy's wildest 
wing ! 
Oh, tenderness that found'st so 
sweet a scope ! 
Prince who dost pride thee on thy 
mighty sway. 
When thou canst feel such love, thou 
shalt be great as they ! 



VI. 

Her son, compelled, the country's 
foes had fought. 
Had bled in battle; and the stern 

control 
Which ruled his sinews and coerced 

his soul 
Utterly poisoned life's unmingled 
bowl, 
And unsubduable evils on him brought. 
He was the shadow of the lusty child 
Who, when the time of summer season 
smiled. 
Did earn for her a meal of honesty. 
And with affectionate discourse be- 
guiled 
The keen attacks of pain and pov- 
erty; 
Till Power, as envying her this only 

joy. 

From her maternal bosom tore 
unhappy boy. 



VII. 



the i 



And now cold charity's unwelcome 
dole 
Was insufificient to support the pair; 
And they would perish rather than 

would bear 
The law's stern slavery, and the 
insolent stare ; 

With which law loves to rend the 

poor man's soul — 
The bitter scorn, the spirit-^inking 

noise 
Of heartless mirth which women, 
men, and boys. 
Wake in this scene of legal misery. 



TO HARRIET: A FRAGMENT. 



671 



TO THE REPUBLICANS OF 
NORTH AMERICA. 

I. 

Brothers ! between you and me 
Whirlwinds sweep and billows roar : 

Yet in spirit oft I see 

On thy wild and winding shore 

Freedom's bloodless banners wave, — 

Feel the pulses of the brave 

Unextinguisht in the grave, — 

See them drencht in sacred gore, — 

Catch the warrior's gasping breath 

Murmuring " Liberty or death ! " 



Shout aloud ! Let every slave, 

Crouching at Corruption's throne. 
Start into a man, and brave 

Racks and chains without a groan; 
And the castle's heartless glow, 
And the hovel's vice and woe. 
Fade like gaudy flowers that blow — 

Weeds that peep, and then are gone; 
Whilst, from misery's ashes risen. 
Love shall burst the captive's prison. 



III. 



Cotopaxi ! bid the sound 

Thro' thy sister mountains ring, 
Till each valley smile around 
At the blissful welcoming ! 
And O thou stern Ocean-deep, 
Thou whose foamy billows sweep 
Shores where thousands wake to weep 

Whilst they curse a villain king, 
On the winds that fan thy breast 
Bear thou news of Freedom's rest ! 

IV. 

Can the day-star dawn of love, 

Where the flag of war unfurled 
Floats with crimson stain above 
The fabric of a ruined world? 
Never but to vengeance driven 
When the patriot's spirit shriven 
Seeks in death its native heaven ! 

There, to desolation hurled. 
Widowed love may watch thy bier, 
Balm thee with its dying tear. 



TO IRELAND. 

Bear witness, Erin ! when thine injured 

isle 
Sees summer on its verdant pastures 

smile, 
Its cornfields waving in the winds that 

sweep 
The Ijillowy surface of thy circling deep. 
Thou tree whose shadow o'er the Atlan- 
tic gave 
Peace, wealth, and beauty, to its friendly 

wave, 

its blossoms fade. 
And blighted are the leaves that cast its 

shade ; 
Whilst the cold hand gathers its scanty 

fruit, 
Whose chillness struck a canker to its 

root. 

[See page 676 for additional stanza.] 



TO HARRIET : A FRAGMENT. 

O THOU 
Whose dear love gleamed upon the 

gloomy path 
Which this lone spirit travelled, drear 

and cold 
But swiftly leading to those awful limits 
Which mark the bounds of lime, and of 

the space 
When time shall be no more, — wilt thou 

not turn 
Those spirit-beaming eyes, and look on 

me, 
Until I be assured that earth is heaven. 
And heaven is earth? 



THE DEVIL'S WALK. 

A BALLAD. 
I. 

Once, early in the morning, 

Beelzebub arose. 
With care his sweet person adorning, 

He put on his Sunday clothes. 



672 



JUVENILIA. 



II. 

He drew on a boot to hide his hoof, 

He drew on a glove to hide his claw, 
His horns were concealed by a bras- 

chapeau, 
And the Devil went forth as natty a beau, 
As Bond Street ever saw. 

III. 

He sate him down, in London town, 

Before earth's morning ray. 
With a favorite imp he began to chat, 
On religion, and scandal, this and that. 
Until the dawn of day. 

IV. 

And then to St. James's Court he went. 
And St. Paul's Church he took on his 
way, 

He was mighty thick with every Saint, 
Tho' they were formal and he was gay. 

V. 

The Devil was an agriculturist. 

And as bad weeds quickly grow, 

In looking over his farm, I wist 

He would n't find cause for woe. 

VI. 

He peept in each hole, to each chamber 
stole. 
His promising live-stock to view; 
Grinning applause, he just showed them 

his claws. 
And they shrunk with affright from his 
ugly sight. 
Whose work they delighted to do. 

VII. 

Satan poked his red nose into crannies 
so small, 

One would think that the innocents 

fair. 

Poor lambkins ! were just doing nothing 

at all, ^ ^ 

But settling some dress or arranging 

some ball, ^ 

But the Devil saw deeper there. j 



VIII. 

A Priest, at whose elbow the Devil dur- 
ing prayer. 
Sate familiarly, side by side. 
Declared, that if the tempter were there, 

His presence he would not abide. 
Ah, ha ! thought Old Nick, that 's a very 

stale trick, 
For without the Devil, O favorite of evil. 
In your carriage you would not ride. 

IX. 

Satan next saw a brainless King, 

Whose house was as hot as his own, 
Many imps in attendance were there on 

the wing, 
They flapt the pennon and twisted the 
sting. 
Close by the very Throne. 

X. 

Ah, ha ! thought Satan, the pasture is 
good, 
My Cattle will here thrive better 
than others. 
They dine on news of human blood. 
They sup on the groans of the dying 

and dead. 
And supperless never will go to bed; 
Which will make them fat as their 
brothers. 

XI. 

Fat as the fiends that feed on blood. 
Fresh and warm from the fields of 
Spain, A 

Where ruin ploughs her gory way, ■ 
When the shoots of earth are nipt in the 
bud. 
Where Hell is the Victor's prey, 
Its glory the meed of the slain. 



XII. 



Fat — as the death-birds on Erin's shore, 
That glutted themselves in her dearest 

gore. 
And flitted round Castlereagh, 
When they snatcht the Patriot's heart, 

that his grasp 



^1 



THE DEVIL'S WALK. 



673 



Had torn from its widow's maniac clasp, 
And fled at the dawn of day. 

XIII. 

Fat — as the reptiles of the tomb, 

That riot in corruption's spoil, 
That fret their little hour in gloom, 
And creep, and live the while. 

XIV. 

Fat as that Prince's maudlin brain. 
Which addled by some gilded toy, 

Tired, gives his sweetmeat, and again 
Cries for it, like a humored boy. 

• XV. 

For he is fat, his waistcoat gay. 
When strained upon a levee day, 

Scarce meets across his princely 
paunch, 
And pantaloons are like half moons 
Upon each brawny haunch. 

XVI. 

How vast his stock of calf ! when plenty 
Had filled his empty head and heart, 

Enough to satiate foplings twenty, 
Could make his pantaloon seams start. 

XVII. 

The Devil, (who sometimes is called 
nature,) 

For men of power provides thus well. 
Whilst every change and every feature. 

Their great original can tell. 

XVIII. 

Satan saw a lawyer a viper slay. 

That crawled up the leg of his table, 

It reminded him most marvellously. 
Of the story of Cain and Abel. 

XIX. 

The wealthy yeoman, as he wanders, 

His fertile fields among, 
And on his thriving cattle ponders, 
Counts his sure gains, and hums a 
song; 



Thus did the Devil, thro' earth walking, 
Hum low a hellish song. 



XX. 

For they thrive well, whose garb of gore, 

Is Satan's choicest livery, 
And they thrive well, who from the poor. 

Have snatcht the bread of penury, 
And heap the houseless wanderer's store. 

On the rank pile of luxury. 

XXI. 

The Bishops thrive, tho' they are big. 
The Lawyers thrive, tho' they are thin; 

For every gown, and every wig, 

Hides the safe thrift of Hell within. 

XXII. 

Thus pigs were never counted clean, 
Allho' they dine on finest corn; 

And cormorants are sin-like lean, 
Altho' they eat from night to morn. 

XXIII. 

Oh ! why is the Father of Hell in such 
glee. 
As he grins from ear to ear? 
Why does he doff his clothes joyfully. 
As he skips, and prances, and flaps his 

wing. 
As he sidles, leers, and twirls his sting, 
And dares, as he is, to appear? 

XXIV. 

A statesman past — alone to him. 

The Devil dare his whole shape un- 
cover, 

To show each feature, every limb. 
Secure of an unchanging lover. 

XXV. 

At this known sign, a welcome sight, 
The watchful demons sought their 
King, ^ 

And every fiend of the Stygian night, 
Was in an instant on the wing. 



674 



JUVENILIA. 



XXVI. 

Pale Loyalty, his guilt-steeled brow, 
With wreaths of gory laurel crowned; 

The hell-hounds, Murder, Want, and 
Woe, 
For ever hungering flockt around; 

From Spain had Satan sought their food, 

'T was human woe and human blood ! 

XXVII. 

Hark the earthquake's crash I hear. 
Kings turn pale and Conquerors start, 

Ruffians tremble in their fear, 
For their Satan doth depart. 

XXVIII. 

This day fiends give to revelry, 
To celebrate their King's return, 

And with delight its sire to see. 
Hell's adamantine limits burn. 

XXIX. 

But were the Devil's sight as keen 
As Reason's penetrating eye, 

His sulphurous Majesty I ween, 
Would find but little cause for joy. 

XXX. 

For the sons of Reason see, 

That ere fate consume the Pole, 

The false Tyrant's cheek shall be. 
Bloodless as his coward soul. 



TO THE QUEEN OF MY HEART.i 

I. 

Shall we roam, my love, 
To the twilight grove. 



1 Printed as Shelley's by Medwin ; reprinted 
by Mrs. Shelley, first edition of 1839, but subse- 
quently withdrawn as of doubtful genuineness. — 



When the moon is rising bright; 

Oh, I '11 whisper there, 

In the cool night-air. 
What I dare not in broad daylight I 

II. 

I '11 tell thee a part 

Of the thoughts that start 

To being when thou art nigh; 

And thy beauty, more bright 
Than the stars' soft light. 

Shall seem as a weft from the sky. 

III. 

When the pale moonbeam 

On tower and stream 
Sheds a flood of silver sheen, 

How I love to gaze 

As the cold ray strays 
O'er thy face, my heart's throned 
queen ! 

IV. 

Wilt thou roam with me 

To the restless sea. 
And linger upon the steep. 

And list to the flow 

Of the waves below 
How they toss and roar and leap ! 

V. 

Those boiling waves 

And the storm that raves 
At night o'er their foaming crest, 

Resemble the strife 

That, from earliest life. 
The passions have waged in my breast. 

VI. 

Oh, come then and rove 

To the sea or the grove 
When the moon is rising bright, 

And I '11 whisper there 

In the cool night-air 
What I dare not in broad daylight. 



APPENDIX. 



UGOLINO. 

From Dante's Inferno, Canto xxxiii. 
11. 22-75. 

Translated by Medwin, with aid from 
Shelley. 

Shelley's contributions are printed in Ro- 
man type, Medwin's portion in italics. 

Now had the loophole of that dungeon still 
Which bears the name of Famine's 
Tower from tne, 
And rvhcre 7 is fit that many another will 

Be doomed to linger in ca/fivity, 
Shown thro' its narrow opening in my 
cell, 
Moon after moon slow waning, when a 
sleep 
That of the future burst the veil, in dream. 

Visited me. It was a slumber deep 
And evil ; for I saw — or I did seem 

To see — that tyrant lord his rex-els keep, 
The leader of the cruel hunt to than, 
Chasing the wolf and wolfctibs up ths 
steep 
Ascent that from the Pisan is the screen 

Of Lucca. With him Gualandi came, 
Simondi, and Lanfranchi, bloodhounds 
lean, 
Trained to the sport and eager for the 
game, 
Wide ranging in his front. But soon were 
seen, 



Tho' by so short a course, with spirits 
tame 
The father and his whelps to flag at once. 

When I 
Heard lockt beneath me of that horrible 
tower 

The outlet, then into their eyes alone 

I lookt to read myself, without a sign 
Or word. 

But, 7i<hen to shine 
Upon the world, not us, came forth the 
light 
Of the new sun, and, thwart my prison 
throxvn, 
Gleamed thro' its narroxv chink, a doleful 
sight, 
Three faces, each the reflex of my own. 
Were imaged by this faint and ghastly 
ray. 

'' Father, our woes so great were yet the less 
Would you but eat of us : H was you who 
clad 
Our bodies in these weeds of wretched- 
ness, — 
Despoil them!" — Not to make their 
hearts more sad, 
I husht myself. 

Between the fifth and sixth day, ere H was 
dawn, 
I found myself blind-groping o'er the 
three. 



675 



676 



APPENDIX. 



FROM CALDERON'S CISMA 
D'INGLATERRA. 

Translated by Medwin, with aid from 
Slielley. 

Shelley's contributions are printed in Ro- 
man type, Medwin's portion in itaUcs. 

hast thou not seen, officious with delight. 
Move thro' the illumined air about the 
flower 
The bee, that fears to drink its purple light, 
Lest danger lurk within that rose's 
bower ? 
Hast thou fiot marked the moth's efiam- 
oured flight 
About the taper'' s flame at evening hour, 
Till kindle in that monumental fire 
His sunflower wings their own funereal 
pyre ? 

My heart, its zvishcs trejjibling to unfold, 
Thus roujtd the rose and taper hovering 
came ; 
And Passion's slave, Distrust, in ashes cold 
Smothered awhile, but could not quench, 
the flame ; 
Till Love, that grows by disappointme7it 
bold, 
And Opportunity, had conquered 
Shame, — 
And like the bee and tnoth, in act to close, 
I burnt my wings, and settled on the rose. 



ADDITIONAL STANZA TO 
IRELAND.i 

" I COULD Stand 
Upon thy shores, O Erin, and could count 
The billows that, in their unceasing swell. 
Dash on thy beach, and every wave might 

seem 
An instrument in Time, the giant's grasp. 
To burst the barriers of Eternity. 
Proceed, thou giant, conquering and to 

conquer ; 
March on thy lonely way ! The nations fall 
TBeneath thy noiseless footstep ; pyramids 
That for millenniums have defied the blast. 
And laught at lightnings, thou dost crush to 

naught. 
Yon monarch, in his solitary pomp, 

^ See p. 671. 



Is but the fungus of a winter day 

That thy light footstep presses into dust. 

Thou art a conqueror. Time ; all things give 

way 
Before thee but the fixt and virtuous will ; 
The sacred sympathy of soul which was 
When thou wert not, which shall be when 

thou perishest. 



EVENING.— TO HARRIET.2 

O THOU bright Sun ! beneath the dark blue 
line 
Of western distance that sublime descend- 
e^t, 
And, gleaming lovelier as thy beams de- 
cline, 
Thy million hues to every vapor lendest. 
And, over cobweb lawn and grove and stream 
Sheddest the liquid magic of thy light. 
Till calm Earth, with the parting splendor 
bright. 
Shows like the vision of a beauteous dream •, 
What gazer now with astronomic eye 

Could coldly count the spots within thy 
sphere ? 
Such were thy lover, Harriet, could he fly 
The thoughts of all that makes his pas- 
sion dear. 
And, turning senseless from thy warm 

caress. 
Pick flaws in our close-woven happiness. 



TO lANTHE.S 

I LOVE thee. Baby ! for thine own sweet 
sake ; 
Those azure eyes, that faintly dimpled 

cheek. 
Thy tender frame, so eloquently weak, 
Love in the sternest heart of hate might 

wake ; 
But more when o'er thy fitful slumber bend- 
ing 
Tliy mother folds thee to her wakeful 
heart. 
Whilst love and pity, in her glances blend- 

All that thy passive eyes can feel impart : ' 
More, when some feeble lineaments of her, 
who bore thy weight beneath her spotless 
bosom, 

^ Evening. — To Harriet. Published by 
Dowden, Life of Shelley, 1887. Composed 
July 31, 1813. 

^ To lanthe. Published by Dowden, Life 
of Shelley, 1887. Composed September, 1813^ 



APPENDIX. 



677 



As with deep love I read thy face, recur, — 
More dear art thou, O fair and fragile blos- 
som ; 

Dearest when most thy tender traits ex- 
press 

The image of thy mother's loveliness. 



THE PINE FOREST OF THE CAS- 
CINE NEAR PISA.i 

FIRST DRAFT OF " TO JANE : THE INVEN- 
TION, THE RECOLLECTION." 

Dearest, best and brightest. 

Come away. 
To the woods and to the fields ! 
Dearer than this fairest day 
Which, like thee to those in sorrow, 
Conies to bid a sweet good-morrow 
To the rough Year just awake 
In its cradle in the brake. 



The eldest of the hours of Spring, 
Into the winter wandering. 
Looks upon the leafless wood ; 
And the banks all bare and rude 
Found, it seems, this halcyon Morn 
In February's bosom born. 
Bending from Heaven, in azure mirth, 
Kist the cold forehead of the Earth, 
And smiled upon the silent sea. 
And bade the frozen streams be free ; 
And waked to music all the fountains. 
And breathed upon the rigid mountains, 
And made the wintry world appear 
Like one on whom thou smilest, dear. 



FRAGMENTS. 

Radiant Sister of the Day, 
Awake ! arise ! and come away ! 
To the wild woods and the plains, 
To the pools where winter rains 
Image all the roof of leaves, 
Where the pine its garland weaves 
Sapless, gray, and ivy dun 
Round stems that never kiss the sun ■ 
To the sandhills of the sea, 
Where the earliest violets be. 



^ The Pine Forest of the Cascitie near Pisa. 
Published by Mrs. Shelley, 1824. 



Now the last of many days, 
All beautiful and bright as thou. 
The loveliest and the last, is dead. 
Rise, Memory, and write its praise ! 
And do thy wonted work and trace 
The epitaph of glory fled ; 
For now the Earth has changed its face, 
A frown is on the Heaven's brow. 

We wandered to the Pine Forest 
That skirts the Ocean's foam. 

The lightest wind was in its nest, 
The tempest in its home. 

The whispering waves were half asleep, 
The clouds were gone to play. 

And on tlie woods, and on the deep, 
The smile of Heaven lay. 

It seemed as if the day were one 

Sent from lx?yond the skies, 
Which shed to earth above the sun 

A light of Paradise. 

We paused amid the pines that stood 

The giants of the waste, 
Tortured by storms to shapes as rude 

With stems like serpents interlaced. 

How calm it was — the silence there 

By such a chain was bound 
That even the busy woodpecker 

Made stiller by her sound 

The inviolable quietness ; 

The breath of peace we drew 
With its soft motipn made not less 

The calm that round us grew. 

It seemed that from the remotest seat 
Of the white mountain's waste. 

To the bright flower beneath our feet, 
A magic circle traced: — 

A spirit interfused around, 

A thinking silent life, 
To momentary peace it bound 

Our mortal nature's strife ; — 

And still it seemed the centre of 

The magic circle there. 
Was one whose being filled with love 

The breathless atmosphere. 

Were not the crocuses that grew 

Under that ilex-tree 
As beautiful in scent and hue 

As ever fed the bee ? 



678 



APPENDIX. 



We stood beside the pools that lie 

Under the forest bough, 
And each seemed like a sky 

Gulft in a world below ; 

A purple firmament of light, 

Which in the dark earth lay, 
More boundless than the depth of night, 

And clearer than the day — 

In which the massy forests grew 

As in the upper air. 
More perfect both in shape and hue 

Than any waving there. 

Like one beloved the scene had lent 

To the dark water's breast 
Its every leaf and lineament 

With that clear truth exprest ; 

There lay far glades and neighboring 
lawn. 

And thro' the dark green crowd 
The white sun twinkling like the dawn 

Under a speckled cloud. 

Sweet views, which in our world above 

Can never well be seen. 
Were imaged by the water's love 

Of that fair forest green. 

And all was interfused beneath 

Within an Elysium air 
An atmosphere without a breath, 

A silence sleeping there. 

Until a wandering wind crept by, 

Like an unwelcome thought, 
Which from my mind's too faithful eye 

Blots thy bright image out. 

For thou art good and dear and kind, 

The forest ever green. 
But less of peace in S 's mind, 

Than calm in waters seen. 



ON ROBERT EMMET'S GRAVE.i 



No trump tells thy virtues — the grave 
where they rest 
With thy dust shall remain unpolluted by 
fame. 
Till thy foes, by the world and by fortune 
carest, 
Shall pass like a mist from the light of 
thy name. 

^ On Robert Emmefs Grave. Published by 
Dowden, Life of Shelley, 1887, dated 1812. 



VII. 

When the storm-cloud that lowers o 'er the 
day-beam is gone, 
Unchanged, unextinguisht its life-spring 
will shine ; 
When Erin has ceast with their memory 
to groan, 
She will smile through the tears of revival 
on thine. 



THE 



RETROSPECT: 

1812.2 



CWM ELAN, 



A SCENE, which wildered fancy viewed 
In the soul's coldest solitude, 
With that same scene when peaceful love 
Flings rapture's color o'er the grove. 
When mountain, meadow, wood and stream 
^^■ith unalloying glory gleam. 
And to the spirit's ear and eye 
Are unison and harmony. 
The moonlight was my dearer day ; 
Then would I wander far away. 
And, lingering on the wild brook's shore 
To hear its unremitting roar. 
Would lose in the ideal flow 
All sense of overwhelming woe ; 
Or at the noiseless noon of night 
Would climb some healthy mountain's 
height. 

And listen to the mystic sound 
That stole in fitful gasps around. 
I joyed to see the streaks of day 
Above the purple peaks decay. 
And watch the latest line of light 
Just mingling with the shades of night ; 
For day with me was time of woe 
When even tears refused to flow ; 
Then would I stretch my languid frame 
Beneath the wild woods' gloomiest shade, 
And try to quench the ceaseless flame 
That on my withered vitals preyed ; 
Would close mine eyes and dream I were 
On some remote and friendless plain, 
And long to leave existence there. 
If with it I might leave the pain 
That with a finger cold and lean 
Wrote madness on my withering mien. 

It was not unrequited love 
That bade my 'wildered spirit rove ; 
'T was not the pride disdaining life, 
That with this mortal world at striie 



2 The Retrospect: Civnt Elan, 1812. 
lished by Dowden, Life 0/ Shelley, 1887. 



Pub- 



APPENDIX. 



679 



Would yield to the soul's inward sense, 
Then groan in human impotence, 
And weep because it is not given 
To taste on Earth the peace of Heaven. 
' T was not that in the narrow sphere 
When nature fixt my wayward fate 
There was no friend or kindred dear 
Formed to become that spirit's mate, 
Which, searching on tired pinion, found 
Barren and cold repulse around ; 
Oh, no ! yet each one sorrow gave 
New graces to the narrow grave. 

For broken vows had early quelled 
The stainless spirit's vestal Hame ; 
Ves! whilst the faithful bosom swelled, 
Then the envenomed arrow came. 
And apathy's unaltering eye 
Beamed coldiiess on the misery ; 
And early I had learned to scorn 
The chains of clay that bound a son 
Panting to seize the wings of morn, 
And where its vital powers were born 
To soar, and spur the cold control 
Which the vile slaves of earthly night 
Would twine around its struggling flight. 

Oh, many were the friends whom fame 
Had linkt with the unmeaning nan^e, 
Whose magic markt among mankind 
The casket of my unknown mind, 
W'lncii hidden from the vulgar glare 
Imbibed no fleeting radiance there. 
My darksome spirit sought — it found 
A friendless solitude around. 
For who that might undaunted stand, 
The savior of a sinking land. 
Would crawl, its ruthless tyrant's slave. 
And fatten upon F"reedom's grave, 
Though doomed with her to perish, where 
The captive clasps abhorred despair. 

They could not share the bosom's feeling, 
Which, passion's every throb revealing. 
Dared force on the world's notice cold 
Thoughts of unprofitable mould, 
Who bask in Custom's tickle ray, 
Fit sunshine of such wintry day ! 
They could not in a twilight walk 
Weave an impassioned web of talk. 
Till mysteries the spirits press 
In wild yet tender awfulness. 
Then feel within our narrow sphere 
How little yet how great we are ! 
But they might shine in courtly glare. 
Attract the rabble's cheapest stare. 
And might command where 'er they move 
A thing that bears the name of love ; 
They might be learnM, witty, gay. 
Foremost in fashion's gilt array, 
On Fame's emblazoned pages shine. 
Be princes' friends, but never mine I 



Ye jagged peaks that frown sublime, 
Mocking the blunted scythe of Time, 
Whence I would watch its lustre pale 
Steal from the moon o'er yonder vale : 

Thou rock, whose bosom black and vast, 
Bared to the stream's unceasing flow, 
Ever its giant shade doth cast 
On the tumultuous surge below : 

Woods, to whose depths retires to die 
The wounded echo's melody. 
And wliitlier this lone spirit bent 
The footstep of a wild intent : 

Meadows I whose green and spangled breast 
These fevered limbs have often prest. 
Until the watchful fiend Despair 
Slept in the soothing coolness there ! 
Have not your varied beauties seen 
The sunken eye, the withering mien, 
Sad traces of the unuttered pain 
That froze my heart and burned my brain. 
How changed since Nature's summer form 
Had last the power my grief to charm, 
Since last ye soothed my spirit's sadness 
Strange chaos of a mingled madness! 
Changed! — not the loathsome worm that 

fed 
In the dark mansions of the dead 
Now soaring thro' the fields of air, 
And gathering purest nectar there, 
A butterfly, whose million hues 
The dazzled eye of wonder views. 
Long lingering on a work so strange. 
Has undergone so bright a change. 

How do I feel my happiness .'' 
I cannot tell, but they may guess 
Whose every gloomy feeling gone. 
Friendship and passion feel alone ; 
Who see mortality's dull clouds 
Before affection's murmur fly, 
Whilst the mild glances of her eye 
Pierce the thin veil of flesh that shrouds 
The spirit's inmost sanctuary. 

O thou ! whose virtues latest known. 
First in this heart yet claim 'st a throne ; 
Whose downy sceptre still shall share 
The gentle sway with virtue there ; 
Thou fair in form, and pure in mind, 
Whose ardent friendship rivets fast 
The flowery band our fates that bind, 
Which incorruptible shall last 
When duty's hard and cold control 
Had thawed around the burning soul, — 
The gloomiest retrospects that bind 
With crowns of thorn the bleeding mind. 
The prosp)ects of most doubtful hue 
That rise on Fancy's shuddering view, — 
Are gilt by the reviving ray 
Which thou hast flung upon my day. 



68o 



APPENDIX. 



FRAGMENT OF A SONNET.— TO 
HARRIET.i 

Ever as now with Love and Virtue's glow 
May thy unwithering soul not cease to burn, 
Still may thine heart with those pure thoughts 

o'erflow 
Which force from mine such quick and warm 

return. 



TO HARRIET.2 

It is not blasphemy to hope that Heaven 
More perfectly will give those nameless joys 
Which throb within the pulses of the blood 
And sweeten all that bitterness which Earth 
Infuses in the heaven-born soul. O thou 
Whose dear love gleamed upon the gloomy 

path 
Which this lone spirit travelled, drear and 

cold, 
Yet swiftly leading to those awful limits 
Which mark the bounds of Time and of the 

space 
When Time shall be no more ; wilt thou not 

turn 
Those spirit-beaming eyes and look on me, 
Until I be assured that Earth is Heaven, 
And Heaven is Earth ? — will not thy glow- 
ing cheek, 
Glowing with soft suffusion, rest on mine, 
And breathe magnetic sweetness thro' the 

frame 
Of my corporeal nature, thro' the soul 
Now knit with these fine fibres ? I would 

give 
The longest and the happiest day that fate 
Has markt on my existence bdt to feel 
One soul-reviving kiss. . . . O thou most 

dear, 
'T is an assurance that this Earth is Heaven, 
And Heaven the flower of that untainted 

seed 
Which springeth here beneath such love as 

ours. 
Harriet ! let death all mortal ties dissolve, 

* Fragment of a Sonnet to Harriet. Pub- 
lished by Dowden, Life of Shelley, 1887, and 
dated Aug. i, 1812. 

' To Harriet. Published, 5-13, by Forman, 
58-69, by Shelley. Notes to Queen Mab, 181 3, 
and entire by Dowden, Life of Shelley, 1887, 
dated 1812. 



But ours shall not be mortal I The cold 

hand 
Of Time may chill the love of earthly minds 
Half frozen now ; the frigid intercourse 
Of common souls lives but a summer's day ; 
It dies, where it arose, upon this earth. 
But ours ! oh, 't is the stretch of fancy's 

hope 
To portray its continuance as now, 
Warm, tranquil, spirit-healing; nor when 

age 
Has tempered these wild ecstasies, and given 
A soberer tinge to the luxurious glow 
Which blazing on devotion's pinnacle 
Makes virtuous passion supersede the power 
Of reason ; nor when life's festival sun 
To deeper manhood shall have ripened me ; 
Nor when some years have added judgment's 

store 
To all thy woman sweetness, all the fire 
Which throbs in thine enthusiast heart ; not 

then 
Shall holy friendship (for what other name 
May love like ours assume ?), not even then 
Shall custom so corrupt, or the cold forms 
Of this desolate world so harden us. 
As when we think of the dear love that binds 
Our souls in soft communion, while we know 
Each other's thoughts and feelings, can we 

say 
Unblushingly a heartless compliment. 
Praise, hate, or love with the unthinking 

world, 
Or dare to cut the unrelaxing nerve 
That knits our love to virtue. Can those 

eyes. 
Beaming with mildest radiance on my heart 
To purify its purity, e'er bend 
To soothe its vice or consecrate its fears .'' 
Never, thou second self ! Is confidence 
So vain in virtue that I learn to doubt 
The mirror even of Truth ? Dark flood of 

Time, 
Roll as it listeth thee ; I measure not 
By month or moments thy ambiguous course. 
Another may stand by me on thy brink, 
And watch the bubble whirled beyond his 

ken. 
Which pauses at my feet. The sense of 

love, 
The thirst for action, and the impassioned 

thought 
Prolong my being ; if I wake no more. 
My life more actual living will contain 
Than some gray veterans of the world's 

cold school. 
Whose listless hours unprofitably roll 
By one enthusiast feeling unredeemed, 
Virtue and Love ! unbending Fortitude, 
Freedom, Devotedness and Purity ! 
That life my spirit consecrates to you. 



I 



APPENDIX. 



68i 



SONNET. 

TO A BALLOON LADEN WITH KNOWL- 
EDGE. 

Bright ball of flame that thro' the gloom 
of even 
Silently takest thine ethereal way, 
And with surpassing glory dimm'st each 
ray 
TwinkUng amid the dark blue depths of 

Heaven, — 
Unlike the fire thou bearest, soon shalt 
thou 
Fade like a meteor in surrounding gloom, 
Whilst that unquenchable is doomed to 
glow 
A watch-light by the patriot's lonely tomb ; 
A ray of courage to the opprest and poor ; 
A spark, tho' gleaming on the hovel's 
hearth, 
Which thro' the tyrant's gilded domes shall 
roar ; 
A beacon in the darkness of the Earth ; 
A sun which, o'er the renovated scene, 
Shall dart like Truth where Falsehood yet 
has been. 



S0NNET.2 

ON LAUNCHING SOME BOTTLES FILLED 
WITH KNOWLEDGE INTO THE BRISTOL 
CHANNEL. 

Vessels of heavenly medicine ! may the 
breeze 
Auspicious waft your dark green forms 

to shore ; 
Safe may ye stem the wide surrounding 
roar 
Of the wild whirlwinds and the raging seas ; 
And oh ! if Liberty e'er deigned to stoop 
From yonder lowly throne her crownless 
brow. 
Sure she will breathe around your emerald 
grt)up 
The fairest breezes of her west that blow. 
Ves! she will waft ye to some freeborn soul 
Whose eye-beam, kindling as it meets your 
freight, 

* Sonnet : To a Balloon laden luith Knoivl- 
ed^e. Published by Dowden, Life of Shelley. 
1887, dated August, 1812. 

' Sonnet : On launching some Bottles filled 
with Kno7vledge into the Bristol Channel. Pub- 
lished by Uowden, Life 0/ Shelley, 1887, dated 
August, 1812. I 



Her heaven-born flame in suffering Earth 

will light, 
Until its radiance gleams from pole to pole, 
And tyrant-hearts with powerless envy 

burst 
To see their night of ignorance dispersed. 



FRAGMENT OF A S0NNET.8 

FAREWELL TO NORTH DEVON. 

Where man's profane and tainting hand 
Nature's primeval loveliness has marred, 
And some few souls of the high bliss de- 
barred 
Which else obey her powerful command; 

. . . mountain piles 
That load in grandeur Cambria's emerald 
vales. 



ON LEAVING LONDON FOR WALES.* 

Hail to thee, Cambria! for the unfettered 

wind 
Which from thy wilds even now methinks 

I feel, 
Chasing the clouds tliat roll in wrath be- 
hind, 
And tiglitening the soul's laxest nerves to 

steel ; 
True mountain Liberty alone may heal 
The pain wliich Custom's obduracies bring, 
And he who dares in fancy even to steal 
One draught from Snowdon's ever sacred 
spring 
Blots out the unholiest rede of worldly wit- 
nessing. 

And shall that soul, to selfish peace re- 
signed. 
So soon forget the woe its fellows share ? 
Can Snowdon's Lethe from the freeborn 

mind 
So soon the page of injured penury tear? 
Does this fine mass of human passion dare 
To sleep, unhonoring the patriot's fall. 
Or life's sweet load in quietude to bear 
While millions famish even in Luxury's 
hall. 
And Tyranny, high-raised, stern lowers on 
all? 

^ Fragment 0/ a Sonnet : FareTvell to North 
Devon. Published by Dowden, Li/e of Shel- 
ley, 1887, dated August, 1S12. 

* On Leaning London for IVales : A Frag- 
ment. Published by Dowden, Life of Shelley, 
1887, dated November, 1812. 



682 



APPENDIX. 



No, Cambria ! never may thy matchless 

vales 
A heart so false to hope and virtue 

shield ; 
Nor ever may thy spirit-breathing gales 
Waft freshness to the slaves who dare to 

yield. 
For me ! . . . the weapon that I burn to 
wield 
I seek amid thy rocks to ruin hurled, 
That Reason's flag may over Freedom's 

field, 
Symbol of bloodless victory, wave un- 
furled, 
A meteor-sign of love effulgent o 'er the 
world. 



Do thou, wild Cambria, calm each strug- 
gling thought ; 
Cast thy sweet veil of rocks and woods 

between, 
That by the soul to indignation wrought 
Mountains and dells be mingled with the 

scene ; 
Let me forever be what I have been, 
But not forever at my needy door 
Let Misery linger speechless, pale, and 

lean ; 
I am the friend of the unfriended poor. — 
Let me not madly stain their righteous 
cause in gore. 



NOTES. 



Page 39. 

Throughout this varied and eternal world 
etc. 

In Shelley's edition there is a comma after 
element and a full stop at remained. Mr. 
Tutin proposed the emendation. 



Page 94. 
The DcEtnon of the World. A Fragment. 

Part I. appeared in the volume which con- 
tained Alastor. Part II. was recovered by 
Mr. Forman from a copy of Queen Mab 
revised by Shelley. 

Page 104. 
Preface to Alastor. 

Shelley's Preface to Alastor, etc., closed 
with the following reference to " The Daemon 
of the World": "The Fragment entitled 
' The D.iiMON of the World "is a de- 
tached part of a poem which the autlior 
does not intend for publication. The metre 
in which it is composed is that of ' Samson 
Agonistes' and the Italian pastoral drama, 
and may be considered as the natural meas- 
ure into which poetical conceptions, ex- 
f)ressed in harmonious language, naturally 
all." 

Page 107. 

Herself a poet. 

Mrs. Shelley's second edition, 1839, reads 
" Himself a poet," which Mr. Rossetti fol- 
lows. 

Page T13. 

In the light of evening, and, its precipice 

I insert the comma after and. 



Page 117. 

The Rex'olt of Islam. 

To restore the text of '' Laon and Cythna " 
it will be necessary to make the following 
changes in " The Revolt of Islam." At the 
close of Preface, p. 121, add as follows: — 
" In the personal conduct of my Hero and 
Heroine, there is one circumstance which 
was intended to startle the reader from the 
trance of ordinary life. It was my object 
to break through the crust of those outworn 
opinions on which established institutions 
depend. I have appealed therefore to the 
most universal of ail feelings, and have en 
deavored to strengthen tlie moral sense, by 
forbidding it to waste its energies in seeking 
to avoid actions which are only crimes of 
convention. It is because there is so great 
a multitude of artificial vices that there are 
so few real virtues. Those feelings alone 
which are benevolent or malevolent, are 
essentially good or bad. The circumstance 
of which I speak was introduced, however, 
merely to accustom men to that charity and 
toleration which the exhibition of a practice 
widely differing from their own has a tend- 
ency to promote. J Nothing indeed can be 
more mischievous than many actions, inno- 
cent in themselves, which might bring down 
upon individuals the bigoted contempt and 
rage of the multitude." 

P. 140, c. 11. St. xxi. 1. I : 

" I had a little sister, whose fair eyes " 

P. 140, c. II. St. XXV. 1 2 : 
" To love in human life, this sister sweet," 

P. 145, c. HI. St. i. 1 I : 
" What thoughts had sway over my sister's 
slumber" 

P. 145, c. III. St. i. I. 3 : 

"As if they did ten thousand years out- 
number" 

1 The sentiments connected with and charac- 
teristic of this circumstance have no personal 
reference to the Writer. [Shelley's note ] 



683 



684 



NOTES. 



P. 157, c. IV. St. XXX. 1. 6: 

"And left it vacant — 't was her brother's 
face — " 

P. 167, c. V. St. xlvii. 1. 5 : 
" I had a brother once, but he is dead ! — " 

P. 175, c. VI. St. xxiv. 1. 8 : 
" My own sweet sister looked), with joy did 
quail," 

P. 177, c. VI. St. xxxi. 1. 6: 
" The common blood which ran within our 
frames," 

p. 178, c. VI. St. xxxix. 11. 6-9: 

" With such close sympathies, for to each other 
Had high and solemn hopes, the gentle 

might 
Of earliest love, and all the thoughts which 
smother 
Cold Evil's power, now linked a sister and a 
brother." 

P. 178, c. VI. St. xl. 1. i: 

" And such is Nature's modesty, that those " 
P. 190, c. via. St. iv. 1. 9: 

" Dream ye that God thus builds for man in 
solitude ? " 

P. 190, c. VIII. St. v. 1. I : 
"What then is God? Ye mock yourselves 
and give " 

P. 190, c. VIII. St. vi. 1. I : 
"What then is God? Some moonstruck 
sophist stood " 

P. 190, c. VIII. St. vi. 11. 8, 9 : 

" And that men say God has appointed Death 
On all who scorn his will to wreak immortal 
wrath." 

P. 190, c. VIII. St. vii. 11. 1-4: 

" Men say they have seen God, and heard 
from God, 
Or known from others who have known 
such things, 
And that his will is all our law, a rod 
To scourge us into slaves — that Priests 
and Kings" 

P. 190, c. VIII. St. viii. 1. I : 

" And it is said, that God will punish wrong ; " 

P. 190, c. VIII. St. viii. 11. ;^, 4: 

"And his red hell's undying snakes among 
Will bind the wretch on whom he fixed a 
stain " 

P. 191, c. VIII. St. xiii. 11. 3, 4: 

" For it is said God rules both high and low, 
And man is made the captive of his 
brother; " 

p. 197, c. IX. St. xiii. 1. 8: 
" To curse the rebels. To their God did they " 

P. 197, c. IX. St. xiv. 1. 6: 
" By God, and Nature, and Necessity." 

P. 198, c. IX. St. XV. The stanza contains ten 
lines — 11. 4-7 as follows: 



" There was one teacher, and must ever be, 
They said, even God, who, the necessity 
Of rule and wrong had armed against man- 
kind, 

His slave and his avenger there to be ; " 

P. 198, c. ix. St. xviii. 11. 3-6 : 

" And Hell and Awe, which in the heart of man 
Is God itself; the Priests its downfall knew, 
As day by day their altars lovelier grew. 
Till they were left alone within the fane ; " 

P. 206, c.-x. St. xxii. 1. 9 : 
" On fire ! Almighty God his hell on eartli has 
spread ! " 

P. 207, c. X. St. xxvi 11. 7, 8: 

" Of their Almighty God, the armies wind 
In sad procession : each among the train." 

P. 207, c. X. St. xxviii. 1. I : 
" O God Almighty ! thou alone hast power." 

P. 208, c. X. St. xxxi. 1. 1 : 
" And Oromaze, and Christ, and Mahomet." 

P. 208, c. X. St. xxxii, 1. I : 
"He was a Christian Priest from whom it 
came " 

P. 208, c. X. St. xxxii. 1. 4 : 
" To quell the rebel Atheists ; a dire guest " 

P. 208, c. X. St. xxxii. 1. 9: 
" To wreak his fear of God on vengeance on 
mankind " 

P. 208, c. X. St. xxxiv. 11, 5, 6; 

" His cradled Idol, and the sacrifice 
Of God to God's own wrath — that Islam's 
creed " 

P. 208, c. x. St. XXXV. 1. 9: 
"And thrones, which rest on faith in God, 
nigh overturned." 

P. 209, c. X. St. xxxix. 1. 4 : 
" Of God may be appeased." He ceased, and 
they" 

P. 209, c. X. St. xl. 1. 5 : 
" With Storms and shadows girt, sate God, 
alone," 

P. 210, c. X. St. xliv. 1. 9 : 

"As ' hush 1 hark! Come they yet? God, 
God, thine hour is near ! ' " 

P. 210, c. X. St. xlv. 1. 8 : 
" Men brought their atheist kindred to ap- 
pease " 

P. 211, c. X. St. xlvii. 1. 6: 
" The threshold of God's throne, and it was 
she ! " 

P. 214, c. XI. St. xvi. 1. I ; 
" Ye turn to God for aid in your distress ; " 

P. 216, c. XI. St. XXV. 1. 7 : 
" Swear by your dreadful God." — " We swear, 
we swear ! " 

P. 218, c. xii. St. X. 1. 9: 
" Truly for self, thus thought tha,t Christian 
Priest indeed," 



NOTES. 



685 



P. 218, c. XII. St. xi. 1. 9: 

" A woman ? God has sent his other victim 
here." 

P. 218, c. xii. St. xii. 11. 6-8: 

" Will 1 stand up before God's golden throne, 
And cry, O Lord, to thee did 1 betray 
An Atheist; but for me she would have 
known." 

P. 221, c xii. St. xxix. 1. 4 : 
" In torment and in fire have Atheists gone ; " 

P. 221, c. xii. St. XXX. 1. 4: 
" How Atheists and Republicans can die ; " 

Page 170. 

Beneath -whose spires which swayed ifi the 
red flame 

Shelley's edition reads light for fiame. 
The emendation is Mr. Rossetti's. 

Page 171. 

And the great gate. Then, none kn'^w whence 
or why, 

In Shelley's edition there is a comma after 
gate. The emendation is Mr. Rossetti's. 

Page 172. 

As sudden earthquakes light many a vol- 
cano-isle, 

In Shelley's edition there is a full stop at 
isle. The comma is substituted by Mr. 
For man. 

Page 182. 

Which dawned through the reyit soul : and 
words it gave, 

Shelley's edition has no comma after gate 
nor after gestures, nor has it marks of paren- 
thesis around line 4 of the stanza. The 
emendation is Mr. A. C. Bradley's. 

Page 191. 

" Oh ! Love, who to the heart of wandering 
man 

Shelley's edition has ''hearts of wander- 
ing men." The emendation is Mr. Ros- 
setti's. 

Page 191. 

And Hate is throned on high with Fear his 
mother^ 

This is the reading of " Laonand Cyth- 
na." " The Revolt of Islam " has " her 
mother." There is no authority for her, Mr. 
Forman says, in Shelley's revised copy. 



Page 197. 

Words which the lore of truth in hues of 
flattie 

Shelley's edition reads " hues of grace." 
The emendation is Mr. Forman's. 

Page 219. 

Near me, among the snakes. When there 
had fled 

Shelley's edition reads " What then." The 
emendation is Mr. Forman's. 

Page 222. 

When the broad stinrise filled with deepen^ 
ing gold 

Shelley's edition reads " Where the broad 
snnrise.-^ The emendation is Mr. Ros- 
setti's. 

Page 223. 

Where its wild surges with the lake were 
blended : 

Shelley's edition reads " When its wild 
surges." The emendation is Mr. Rossetti's. 

Page 223. 

Our bark hung there, as on a line sus- 
pended 

Shelley's edition reads " as one line sus- 
pended.'' The emendation is Mr. Rossetti's. 
In the next line .Shelley's edition has a semi- 
colon after " lake." 

Page 226. 

Of an ancestral name the orphan chief. 

So in Mrs. Shelley's later editions. In 
the "Posthumous Poems" there is a full 
stop after chief 

Page 229. 

And sweet and subtle talk they evermore. 

So in the " Posthumous Poems ; " in later 
editions, " now evermore." 

Page 236. 
And down my cheeks the quick tears ran 
Mr. Rossetti reads " fell " for " ran." 

Page 237. 
Which all that I had undergone 
So in .Shelley's edition. Mr. Forman sug- 
gests " While" for " Which," and three lines 
farther " had almost burst " for " and almost 
burst." 



686 



NOTES, 



Page 246, 

{^Did they not, love, demand too much, 
Those dying tnurmurs ?) 
The marks of parenthesis are due to Mr. 
Rossetti. 

Page 246. 

Had rescue from a chasm of tears ; 
Shelley's edition reads " rescued." The 
emendation is Mr. Forman's. 

Page 246. 

She ceased. — " Lo, -where red morning thro ' 
the wood " 

Shelley's edition reads " woods." The 
emendation is Mr. Rossetti's. 

Page 248. 

Julian and Maddalo. 

The text of this poem has been finally 
ascertained by Mr. Forman from Shelley's 
MS., sent to Leigh Hunt, and placed with 
other precious MSS. at Mr. Forman's dis- 
posal by Mr. Townshend Mayer. 

Page 283. 

Withering in destined pain : but who rains 
down 

Shelley's edition has "reigns down," 
which Mr. Forman defends. * 

Page 285. 

Which in the winds and on the waves doth 
move, 

The word and, introduced here by Mr. 
Rossetti, is wanting in Shelley's edition. 

Page 286. 

And cling to it; tho^ under my wrath'' s 
night 
Shelley's edition reads " wrath's might." 
Mrs. Shelley made the correction. 

Page 289. 

Than all thy sisters, this is the mystic 
shell ; 
Mrs. Shelley omits the word " is.' 

Page 294. 

Of those who were their conquerors: mould- 
ering round 
Mr. Rossetti removes the colon after 
" conquerors," and puts a full stop after 
•* round." 



Page 294. 

The loathsome mask has fallen, the tnan 
remains etc. 

Mr. Rossetti reads — 

" The loathsome mask has fallen. The man 

remains, — 
Spectreless, free, uncircumscribed, but man : 
Equal, unclassed, tribeless, and nationless, 
Exempt from awe, worship, degree, the king 
Over himself ; just, gentle, wise : but man. 
Passionless ? no : — yet free from guilt or 

pain, — " 

Page 298. 

Purple and azure, white, and green, and 
golden. 

The " and " before " green " is due to Mr. 
Rossetti. 

Page 301. 

Darting from starry depths radiance and 
life, doth move. 

So MS. and Mr. Forman ; other editions 
" radiance and light." 

Page 301. 

A half unfrozen dew-globe, 

So Mrs. Shelley ; in original edition " in- 
frozen." 

Page 302. 

Ayid the weak day weeps 
That it should be so. 

Mr. Rossetti makes these lines the close 
of the preceding speech — that of the moon. 

Page 351. 
Whose love was as a bond to all our loves 

The needful word as was supplied by 
Mr. Rossetti. 

Page 355. 
The Mask of Anarchy. 

Several readings different from those of 
the edition of 1832 are derived from a MS. 
mainly in Mrs. Shelley's handwriting, and 
used by Mr. Forman in his edition of Shel- 
ley s Poetical Works. 

Page 367. 

To bully one another '5 guilt. 

The original edition has out for one, tot- 
rected by Mr. Forman. 



NOTES. 



687 



Page 376. 
Letter to Maria Gisborne. 

The text as first printed has been emended 
with the aid of readings supplied by Dr. 
Garnett from Shelleys dralt, and by Mr. 
Forman from a transcript in Mrs. Shelley's 
handwriting. 

Page 381. 

The Wttch of Atlas. 

Some readings are derived from a tran- 
script in Mrs. Shelley's handwriting used by 
Mr. Forman. 

Page 384. 

It was their work to bear to 7nany a saint 

So Mr. Rossetti , previous ed its work. 

Page 447. 

Fear, 
Revenge and Wrong bring forth their kind, 

Dr. Garnett (" Relics of Shelley ") had 
printed " For Revenge." The correction 
is Mr. Rossetti's. 

Page 456 
Fragments of an Unfinished Drama. 

These fragments were in part printed by 
Mrs. Shelley, in part obtained from MS. by 
Dr. Garnett, and first printed by Mr. Ros- 
setti. The passage of prose on p. 456 is 
Mrs. Shelley's. 

Page 461. 
Charles the First. 

These fragments were in part printed by 
Mrs. Shelley, in part deciphered from MS., 
and constructed in their present form by 
Mr. Rossetti. The list of Dramatis Per 
sonce was drawn up by Mr. Forman. Two 
or three emendations are due to Mr, Forman. 

Page 474. 

The Triumph of Life. 

Emendations of the text as originally 
printed were derived from MS. by Dr. 
Garnett. 

Page 476. 

Tempering the light. Ufon the chariot 
beam 

Mr. Rossetti's emendation. Mrs. 

Shelley read — 

" Tempering the light upon the chariot 
beam , " 



Page 478. 

Said the grim, Feature (of my thought 
aware) . 

So Mr, Rossetti, emending Mrs. 
Shelley's — 

" Said the grim Feature of my thought : 
' Aware . . ' " 

Page 489. 

Lines. 

Named "November 181 5 " in the 
Literary Pocket-Book for 1823. 

Page 490. 

" / never saw the sun ■* We will walk here 

Mr. Forman makes the ingenious sug- 
gestion — 

" I never saw the sun rise ? We will wake 
here ..." 

Page 497, 

The flames were fiercely vomited 

Flames is Mr. Rossetti's emendation on 
the line as previously printed — " The 
waves," etc. 

Page 499. 

To the Lord Chancellor. 

In this poem and that to William Shelley 
some readings are derived from transcripts 
in Mrs. Shelley's handwriting, consulted by 
Mr. Forman. 

Page 499. 

No, Music, thou art not the '■^ food of Love^'' 

So Mr. Forman, no doubt rightly : pre- 
vious editions " god of Love." 

Page 502, 

Otho. 

These two stanzas were printed by Mrs 
Shelley. The " Fragments " which follow 
were printed by Dr. Garnett. Mr. Forman 
and Dr. Garnett think it very likely that 
they belong to " Otho." 

Page 506. 

To the Nile. 

First printed by Mr. Townshend Mayer 
in the St. fames'' s Magazine, March 1879. 



688 



NOTES. 



Page 513. 

The purple noon's transparent might, 
The breath 0/ the moist earth is light, 

The words earth and might are given on 
Dr. Garnett's authority from Shelley's MS. 
In the Posthumous Poems the second of 
these lines does not appear, and light stands 
in place of might. Air appears in some 
editions instead of earth. 

Page 515. 

Marenghi. 

In part given by Mrs. Shelley, in part 
obtained from MS. by Dr. Garnett, and 
first printed by Mr. Rossetti. 

Page 520. 

And their mothers look pale — like the white 
shore 

A MS. of Shelley gives the reading 
" death-white shore." 

Page 520. 

Marry Ruin, thou Tyrant, and God be 
thy guide 

A MS. of Shelley gives "Hell" in place 
of " God." 

Page 526. 

And the stars are shining bright : 

The Harvard College MS. reads " burn- 
ing bright." So " The Liberal." 

Page 526. 

As I must on thtne. 

The Harvard MS. gives — 

" As I most die on thine " 
(Mrs. Shelley's reading, 1839). 



Page 527. 

Of sweet flowers and sunny grass, 

So Harvard College MS. " Of the sweet 
flowers." — Mrs. Shelley's edition. 

Page 535. 

Leaf by leaf day after day, 

The reading by instead of after is sup- 
plied by the MS. in Shelley's handwriting 
in the Library of Harvard College. 



Page 536. 

Cancelled Passage. 

This stanza originally printed before that 
beginning " Spawn, weeds, and filth, a lep- 
rous scum " was omitted in Mrs. Shelley's 
edition. It is cancelled in Shelley's own 
copy in the Harvard College MS. 

Page 537. 

One deck is burst up by the waters below, 

This is the reading of the Harvard 
College MS. Printed editions have from. 
for by. 

Page 540. 

The sweet buds every one. 

In the original printed text we have 
birds. The correction is from Mrs. Shelley. 

Page 542. 

Ode to Liberty. 

The Harvard College MS. in Shelley's 
handwriting is decisive as to the punctua- 
tion of the first two lines. 

Page 546. 

Of King into the dust ' or write it there, 

" King " is found in a fragment ot the 
rough draft. Shelley and Mrs. Shelley put 
four asterisks in place of the word. 

Page 547. 

Or what if Art, an ardent intercessor, 

So Mrs. Shelley. In Shelley's edition 
" O," is printed in place of " Or." 

Page 550. 

Its another'' s face with heaven'' s collected tears. 

The Harvard College MS. in Mrs. Shel- 
ley's handwriting has this reading. Later 
editions, " heaven-collected." 

Page 551. 

My moon-like flight, thou then mafst mark 

So in the Posthumous Poems. " Moon- 
light flight " in Mrs. Shelley's later editions. 

Page 556. 

The Tower of Famine. 

It is uncertain whether the following note 
be Mrs. Shelley's or Shelley's: "At Pisa 



NOTES. 



689 



there still exists the prison of Ugolino, which 
goes by the name of ' La Torre della Fame ' ; 
in the adjoining building the galley-slaves 
are confined. It is situated on the Ponte al 
Mare on the Arno." 

Page 557. 

And many pass it by -with careless tread, 

Mrs Shelley reads passed. The emenda- 
tion is Mr. Rossetti's. 

Page 557. 

Son7iet. 

Readings in this Sonnet are derived from 
a copy in Shelley's handwriting sold at the 
Oilier sale, and from the Harvard College 

MS. 

Page 565. 
And the weary day turned to his rest, 
Mr. Rossetti suggests " her rest." 

Page 567. 

Song. 

I have left this among the Poems of 1821, 
but it seems probable that it was earlier, for 
in the Harvard College MS. a copy made by 
Mrs. Shelley is dated in Shelley's handwrit- 
ing " Pisa, May 1820.'' It is not likely that 
Shelley erred, even though his entry of the 
date of transcription may have been made 
at a later time than the copy. 



Sonnet . 



Page 569. 
Political Greatness. 



Named by Shelley in the Harvard College 
MS., Sonnet, To the Republic of Bcncvcnto. 

Page 569. 

Remembrance. 

In a MS. copy by Shelley followed by Mr. 
Forman, we read, 11. 5-8 — 

" As the wood when leaves are shed. 
As the night when sleep is fled, 
As the heart when joy is dead." 

And, 1. 10 — 
" The owlet night resumes his reign." 

Page 578. 

Thro* seas and winds, cities and wilder- 
nesses, 

Mr. Forman suggests lands in place of 
winds ; or should we read woods ? 



Page 580. 

The Boat on the Serchio. 

Partly given by Mrs. Shelley ; additions 
and corrections made from Shelley's MS. by 
Mr. Rossetti. 

Page 5S2. 

Music. 

Given first in Posthumous Poems. Two 
forms are printed in Mrs. Shelley's second 
edition of 1839. 

Page 582. 

Sonnet to Byron. 

The sonnet as here given was obtained 
from MS. by Mr. Rossetti. 

Under a heaven of cedar boughs ; the drouth 

I adopt Mr. Forman's suggestion drouth 
instead of drought. 

Page 589. 

To fane : The Invitation. 

A version of part of this poem and part 
of the next with variations of text is given 
in the Posthumous Poems. 

Page 589. 

Sit by the fireside with Sorrow. 

So MS.; in Mrs. Shelley's collected edi- 
tions "of Sorrow." 

Page 592. 

Bare woods, zvhose branches stain, 

Mr. Rossetti suggests "strain" for 
" stain." 

Page 604. 

Shall hurl you into dismal Tartarus, 

"Hurl" is the reading of the Harvard 
College MS.; printed editions, "haul." Cf. 
stanza Ixiii. 1. i. 

Page 609. 

As now. I wonder at thee, son of Jove ; 

The full stop after " now " is from the 
Harvard College MS. 

Page 610. 

The soul with sweetness, and like an adept 

Harvard College MS. and Posthumous 
Poems read — 
" The soul with sweetness, as of an adept." 



690 



NOTES. 



Page 612. 

Thou dost alone the veil from death uplift. 

So Harvard College MS.; printed editions 
"of death." 

Page 612. 

In truths and Jove covered their love with 
joy, 

So the Harvard College MS. ; printed edi- 
tions incorrectly — 

" In truth, and Jove covered them with 
love and joy." 

Page 612. 

And steed-subduing Castor, heirs of fame. 

Mr. Rossetti corrected the error "steel- 
subduing " in previous editions, 

Page 614. 

Tritogenia, town-preserving maid, 

Misprinted in Mrs. Shelley's editions 
" Trilogenia." So on p. 616 " Althaea's was 
misprinted " Athaea" in editions previous to 
Mr. Forman's. On p. 618 "Papaiax"was 
erroneously "Papaiapax" until Mr. Forman 
set it right. 

Page 621. 

Ai! ai! I have escaped the Trojan toils. 

In Mrs. Shelley's editions, " Ay ! ay ! " Cor- 
rected by Mr. Rossetti. 

Page 621. 

The ravin is ready on every side, 

In Mrs. Shelley's editions, " The ravine." 
Corrected by Mr. Rossetti. 

Page 621, 

As would contain tejt amphorce, and bound 
it 

In Mrs. Shelley's editions, " four am- 
phorae." The correction was suggested by 
Mr. Swinburne. 

Page 625. 

Semichorus I. We are too far, 

In Mrs. Shelley's editions, " too few ". 
Corrected by Mr. Rossetti. 

Page 628. 

From his struck thigh stains her white navel 
now. 



The MS. of Shelley has "her" for "his," 
in this and the following line. With Mr. 
Rossetti I change it in its first occurrence to 
" his." 

Page 647. 

The trunks are crushed and shattered 

Mr. Rossetti reads " scattered." 

Page 653. 

A Dialogue. 

The title is from Shelley's MS., where 
the poem is given in a later and revised 
text. I introduce from the MS. the cor- 
rection " o''er Eternity's vale " (in place of 
" on "). The date given is 1809. 

Page 654. 

To the Moonbeam. 

Like " A Dialogue," this is given both in 
Hogg's " Life of Shelley " (in a letter of 
17th May, 181 1) and with a revised text 
in a MS. of later date. In the MS. the 
date 23d September, 1809 is given. I cor- 
rect from the MS. the last line of the poem. 

Page 654. 
The Solitary. 
Dated 181 o in Shelley's MS. 

Page 654. 

To Death. 

The title is from Shelley's MS., where it 
appears with a revised text. I correct the 
word " murders " (1. 10) in Hogg's text to 
" murderer," MS. Hogg says the poem was 
written at Oxford (1810). The MS. gives 
twenty additional lines. 

Page 655. 
Love's Rose. 

The title is Mr. Rossetti's. The poem 
appears in a revised text in Shelley's MS., 
with the date 1810. The second hne, 
hitherto given erroneously, I correct from 
the MS. 

Page 655. 

Eyes: A Fragment. 

This is from a MS. copied by Mr. Gar- 
nett. A MS. of later date gives the com- 
plete poem — five eight-lined stanzas. The 
date in the later MS. is 18 10. I correct 
lighten (1. i st. 2) to light from this MS. 



NOTES. 



691 



Page 656. 
Poems from St. Irvyne. 

Following Mr. Rossetti's example I 
supply a title for each of these poems. 

Page 666. 

Stanza from a Translation, etc. 
The entire poem is given in a later MS. 

Page 667. 

Bigotry's Victim. 

From Hogg's " Life of Shelley," given in 
a letter dated 28th April, iSii. Dated 
1810 in a later revised MS. 

Page 667. 

On an Icicle, etc. 

The title is from Shelley's MS., where 
the poem (given in a revised te.xt) is dated 
1809. It is given also in a letter to Hogg, 
dated 6th January, 181 1, where Shelley says 
that he had been most of the previous night 
pacing a churchyard. 

Page 669. 

To Mary, who Died in this Opinion. 

From a letter 
Nov«mber, 181 1. 



to Miss Kitchener, 2^d 
Mr. Esdaile's MS. con 



tains three poems " To Mary," with an 
Advertisement prefixed, and one " To the 
Lover of Mary." The date of these is 
November, 1810. They are selected, Shelley 
says, from many written during three weeks 
of an entrancemenl caused by hearing Mary's 
story. Probably the poem here printed is 
one of those from among which he made his 
later selection. 

Page 669. 

A Tale of Society, etc. 

The title is from Shelley's MS., where 
the poem appears in a later text, and extends 
to ten stanzas. The present text is from a 
letter to Miss Hitchener, 7th January, 1812. 
I made a few corrections from the later MS. 

Page 671. 

To the Republicans of North America. 

The title is from Shelley's MS.; the text, 
from a letter to Miss Hitchener, dated 14th 
F"ebruary, 1812. The later MS. contains an 
additional stanza. I make one or two cor- 
rections of text from this MS. 

Page 671. 

To Harriet : A Fragment. 

The poem from which this fragment is 
taken will be found in tlie *' Life of Shelley," 
by Edward Dowden, vol. i. pp. 286-288. 



A LIST OF SHELLEY'S PRINCIPAL 
WRITINGS.' 



1. Zastrozzi, A Romance. By P. B. S., 
London : Printed for G. Wilkie and J. 
Robinson, 57 Paternoster Row, iSio. 

2. Original Poetry. By Victor and Cazire, 
Worthing: Phillips. 8vo, pp. 64. No copy 
known. 

3. Posthumous Fragments of Margaret 
Nicholson; being Poems found amongst 
the papers of that noted female who at- 
tempted the life of the King in 17S6. 
Edited by John Fitzvictor. Oxford : 
Printed and Sold by J. Munday, 1810. 

6. St. Irvyne ; or. The Rosicrucian : A 
Romance. By A Gentleman of the Uni- 
versity of Oxford. London : Printed for 
J. J. Stockdale, 41 Pall Mall, 181 1. 

7. An Essay on Love. In a letter to 
Godwin, Keswick, i6th January, 1812, 
Shelley speaks of " the ' Essay on Love,' a 
little poem " — as if a printed work. No 
copy is known. 

8. Leonora. This was a novel said to 
have been written in conjunction with T. J. 
Hogg. The printing is said to have been 
stopped in consequence of the expulsion of 
Shelley and Hogg from Oxford. Never 
issued. 

9. The necessity of Atheism. Worthing : 
Printed by E. and W. Phillips. Sold in 
London and Oxford. 

10. A Poetical Essay on the Existing 
State of Things. By a Gentleman of the 
University of Oxford, For assisting to 
maintain in Prison Mr. Peter Finnerty, im- 
prisoned for a libel. London : Sold by 
B. Crosby and Co., and all other book- 
sellers, 181 1. This is advertised in the 
Oxford Herald for 2d March, 181 1, and 
there is strong reason to believe that it was 
by Shelley. No copy is known. 



11. Lines on a Fete at Carlton House — a 
poem of about fifty lines said to have been 
printed, iSii. No copy is known, but a 
fragment has been orally preserved. 

12. A Satire, 181 1 ; supposed to have been 
printed. No copy known ; the title unknown. 

13. An Address to the Irish People. By 
Percy Bysshe Shelley. Dublin, 1812. 

14. Proposals for an Association of those 
Philanthropists, who, convinced of the in- 
adequacy of the moral and political state of 
Ireland to produce benefits which are never 
theless attainable, are willing to unite to 
accomplish its regeneration. By Percy 
Bysshe Shelley. Dublin : Printed by I. 
Eton, Winetavern Street (1812). 

15. Declaration of Rights — a broadside 
printed in Dublin, 1812, 

16. The Devil's Walk; a Ballad — A 
broadside, 181 2. 

17. A Letter to Lord EUenborough, oc- 
casioned by the sentence which he passed on 
Mr. D. I. Eaton, as publisher of the Third 
Part of Paine's " Age of Reason " (Printed 
by Syle at Barnstaple, 1812.) 

18. Queen Mab; a Philosophical Poem: 
with Notes by Percy Bysshe Shelley. 
London : Printed by P. B. Shelley, 23 
Chapel Street, Grosvenor Square, 181 3. 
The poem was printed and published by 
W. Clark, 201 Strand, London, in 1821, and 
was reissued in 1822 by R. Carlile, 55 Fleet 
Street. In 1821 it was reprinted in New 
York in duodecimo form. 

19. A Vindication of Natural Diet. 
Being one of a Series of Notes to Queen 
Mab, a Philosophical Poem. London : 
Printed for J. Callow, medical bookseller, 
Crown Court. Princes Street, Soho, by Smith 
and Davy, Queen Street, Seven Dials, 1813. 



1 For fuller information the reader should consult the volume from which mainly this list has been 
drawn up: "The Shelley Library: An Essay in Bibliography by H. Buxton Forman. Part \. [all 
published as yet]. London: Reeves and Turner, 1886." 



692 



LIST OF SHELLEY'S PRINCIPAL WRITINGS. 



693 



20. A Refutation of Deism : in a Dia- 
logue. London : Printed by Schulze and 
Dean, 13 Poland Street, 1814. 

21. Review of Hogg's " Memoirs of 
Prince Alexy Haimatott," contributed to 
the Critical Review^ December, 18 14. 

22. Alastor; or the Spirit of Solitude: 
and other Poems. By Percy Bysshe Shelley. 
London : Printed for Baldwin, Craddock, 
and Joy, Paternoster Row ; and Carpenter 
and Son, Old Bond Street : by S. Hamilton, 
Wey bridge, Surrey, 18 16. 

23. A Proposal for Putting Reform to 
the Vote throughout the Kingdom. By the 
Hermit of Marlow. I^ondon : Printed for 
C. and J. Oilier, 3 Welbeck Street, Cavendish 
Square, by C. H. Reynell, 21 Piccadilly, 1817. 

24. An Address to the People on the 
Death of the Princess Charlotte. By the 
Hermit of Marlow. 181 7. [The motto " We 
pity the Plumage, but forget the Dying 
Bird" has been mistaken for the title.] 
Known only through a reprint of Thomas 
Rodd about 1843. 

25. History of a Six Weeks' Tour through 
a part of France, .Switzerland, Germany, 
and Holland: with letters descriptive of a 
Sail round the Lake of Geneva and of the 
Glaciers of Chamouni. London : Published 
by T. Hookhani jun., Old Bond .Street ; and 
C. and J. Oilier, Welteck Street, 181 7. 
This is in the main by Mary Shelley, with 
certain contributions from Shelley's pen. 

26. Laon and Cythna; or, the Revolution 
of the Golden City: A Vision of the Nine- 
teenth Century. In the Stanza of -Spenser. 
By Percy B. Shelley. London : Printed for 
Sherwood, Neely, and Jones, Paternoster 
Row; and C. and J. Oilier, Welteck Street: 
by B. M'Millan, Bow Street, Covent Garden, 
181S. 

This by alterations, cancel-leaves, and a 
fresh title was altered into 

27. The Revolt of Islam ; a Poem, in 
twelve cantos. By Percy Bysshe Shelley. 
London; Printed for C. and J. Oilier, Wel- 
beck Street, by B. M'Millan, Bow Street, 
Covent Garden, 1818. .Some few copies are 
dated 1S17. In 1829 the remainder was is- 
sued with a new title-page and the imprint 
" London ; Printed for John Brooks, 421 
Oxford Street, 1829." Some copies of this 
issue give the " Laon and Cythna '" text. 

28. Rosalind and Helen, a Modern 
Eclogue ; with Other Poems : by Percy 
Bysshe Shelley. London : Printed for C. 
and J. Oilier, Vere Street, Bond Street, 
1819. 

29. The Cenci. A Tragedy, in Five 
Acts. By Percy B. Shelley. Italy : Printed 



for C. and J. Oilier, Vere Street, Bond Street, 
London, 1819. 

The Cenci appeared in a second edition. 
London: C. and J. Oilier, 1821. 

30. Prometheus Unbound. A Lyrical 
Drama in Four Acts, witli other Poems. 
By Percy Bysshe Shelley. London : C. and 
J. Oilier, Vere Street, Bond Street, 1820. 

31. (Edipus Tyrannus ; or Swellfoot the 
Tyrant. A Tragedy. In Two Acts. Trans- 
lated from the Original Doric. London : 
Published for the Author, by J. Johnston, 
98 Cheapside ; and sold by all booksellers, 
1820. 

32. Epipsychidion. Verses addressed to 
the Noble and Unfortunate Lady Emilia 

V , now imprisoned in the Convent 

of . London: C. and J. Oilier, \'ere 

Street, Bond Street, 1S21. 

33. .Adonais. An Elegy on the Death of 
John Keats, Author of Endymion, Hyperion, 
etc. By Percy B. Shelley. Pisa, with the 
Types of Didot, 1821. The second edition 
was brought out through the zeal ot .Arthur 
Hallam and the late Lord Houghton at 
Cambridge. Printed by W. Metcalfe, and 
sold by Messrs. Gee and Bridges, Market 
Hill, 1829. 

34. Hellas. A Lyrical Drama. By Percy 
B. Shelley. London : Charles and James 
Oilier. \'ere .street, Bond Street, 1822. This 
was the last work issued during Shelley's 
life. 

35. Posthumous Poems of Percy Bysshe 
Shelley. London, 1824 : Printed for John 
and Henry L. Hunt, Tavistock .Street, 
Covent Garden. [Edited by Mary Shelley.] 

36. The Masque of Anarchy. A Poem. 
By Percy Bysshe Shelley. Now First Pub- 
lished, with a Preface by Leigh Hunt. Lon- 
don : Edward Moxon. 64 New Bond .Street, 
1832. 

37. The Shelley Papers : Memoir of 
Percy Bysshe Shelley. By T. Medwin, 
Esq., and Original Poems and Papers by 
Percy Bysshe .Shelley. Now First Collected. 
London : Whittaker, Treacher, and Co., 

1833- 

38. Essays, Letters from Abroad, Trans- 
lations, and Fragments, By Percy Bysshe 
Shelley. Edited by Mrs. Shelley. In Two 
Volumes. London : Edward Moxon, Dover 
Street. 1S40. 

39. Relics of Shelley. Edited by Richard 
Garnett. London : Edward Moxon and 
Co., Dover Street, 1862. 

40. The Daemon of the W^orld. By Percy 
Bysshe Shelley. The First Part as pub- 
lished in 1 816 with Alastor. The Second 
Part, Deciphered and now First Printed 



694 



LIST OF SHELLEY'S PRINCIPAL WRITINGS. 



from his own Manuscript Revision and 
Interpolations in the Newly Discovered 
Copy of Queen Mab. London : Privately 
printed by H. Buxton Forman, 38 Marlbo- 
rough Hill, 1S76. 

41. Notes on Sculptures in Rome and 
Florence: Together with a Lucianic Frag- 
ment and a Criticism on Peacock's " Rhodo- 
daphne." By Percy Bysshe Shelley. Ed- 
ited by Harry Buxton Forman. London : 
Printed for Private Distribution, 1879. 

A notice of Shelley's unpublished prose 
work, " A Philosophical View of Reform 
(1819), will be found in "Transcripts and 
Studies," by Edward Dowden, 1888, pp. 
41-74. 



Some account of early poems, still un- 
published, will be found in " The Life of 
Percy Bysshe Shelley," by Edward Dowden, 
1886, vol. i. pp. 344-349 ; and poems, or 
passages from poems, in the unpublished 
MS. volume in tiie possession of Mr. Esdaile 
will be found in the same work, vol. i. pp. 
268, 270-274, 286-288, 294, 298-299, 317-318, 
347-348, T>1(^, 385-386, 404, 413-414- 

One poem, " The Wandering Jew's Solilo- 
quy," from the same MS. volume is printed 
in the Shelley Society's Pubhcations, Second 
Series, No. 12. "The Wandering Jew," 
edited by Bertram Dobell (1887), pp. 
69-70. 



ORDER OF POEMS. 



In Editions published during Shelley's Lifetime. 



It seems right to put it in the reader's 
power to place certain poems in the order 
in which they originally appeared witli 
Shelley's approval. 

Alastor was followed in the volume of iSi6 

by- 
The Stanzas beginning " Oh ! there are 

spirits in the air." 
Stanzas, April 1814. 
Mutability. 
Stanzas beginning " The pale, the cold, 

and the moony smile." 
A Summer Evening Churchyard. 
Sonnet : To Wordsworth. 
Sonnet : Feelings of a Republican. 
Superstition (a fragment of Queen Mab). 
Sonnet from the Italian of Dante. 
Sonnet : Translated from the Greek of 

Moschus. 
The Daemon of the World : Part I. 

Rosalind and Helen was followed in the 
volume of 18 19 by — 



Lines Written among the Euganean Hilk. 
Hymn to Intellectual Beauty. 
Sonnet : Ozymandias. 

Prometheus Unbound was followed in the 

volume of 1820 by — 
The .'Sensitive Plant. 
A \nsion of the Sea. 
Ode to Heaven. 
An E.xhortation. 
Ode to the West Wind. 
An Ode: To tlie Assertors of Liberty 

(named originally " .\n Ode ^•'rittea 

October 1S19, before the Spaniards had 

recovered their Liberty '"). 
The Cloud. 
To a Skylark. 
Ode to Liberty. 

Hellas was followed in the volume of 1822 
by — 
Lines written on hearing the N«ws of 
the Death of Napoleon. 



69s 



INDEX TO THE POEMS. 



A.DONAIS, 422. 

Lines written for, 433. 

Adonis, Elegy on the Death of, 627. 
Alastor ; or the Spirit of Solitude, 104. 
Allegory, An, 557. 
Ambushed Dangers, 5S3. 
Anarchy, The Mask of, 355. 

Cancelled Stanza, 531. 

Anthem, A New National, 522. 
Apennines, Passage of the, 506. 
Apollo, Hymn of, 549. 
Appeal to Silence, 518. 
Arabic, From the, 566. 
Arethusa, 548. 
Assertors of Liberty, To the, 522. 

Cancelled Stanza, 523. 

Athanase, Prince, 226. 
Atlas, The Witch of, 381. 
Autumn: A Dirge, 555. 
Awakener, The, 583. 
Aziola, The, 569. 

Balloon, To a, 681. 

Bereavement, 659. 

Bigotry's Victim, 667. 

Bion, Elegy on the Death of, 628. 

Bion, From : Fragment of the Elegy on the 

Death of Adonis, 627. 
Birth of Pleasure, The, 528. 
Blanc, Mont, 492. 

Cancelled Passage of, 495. 

Boat on the Serchio, The, 580. 

Bonaparte, Feelings of a Republican on the Fall 

of, 488. 
Bottles, on Launching, 611. 
Bracknell, Stanza written at, 485. 
Bridal Song, A, 571. 

Another Version, 571. 

Another Version, 572. 

Buona Notte, 559. 
Byron, Sonnet to, 582. 
To (Fragment), 518. 

Calderon's Cisma d'Inglaterra, .70. 

Magico Prodigioso, Scenes from, 632. 

Carlton House, On a Fete at, 668. 
Cascine, Pine Forest of the, 677. 
Castlereagh Administration, Lines written dur- 
ing the, 520. 
Castor and Pollux, Homer's Hymn to, 612. 
Cat, Verses on a, 652. 

Cavalcant;i, Sonnet from the Italian of, 632. 
Dante to Guido, 629. 



Cenci, The, 308. 

Chamouni, Lines written in the Vale of, 492. 

Charles the First, 461. 

Circumstance, 627. 

Cisma d'Inglaterra, Calderon's, 676. 

Cloud-Chariot, A, 503. 

Cloud, The, 540. 

Coleridge, To, 488. 

Consequence, 562. 

Constantia, To, 499. 

To, Singiiig, 498. 

Convito, First Canzone of the, 630. 

Critic, Lines to a, 504. 

Cyclops of Euripides, The, 615. 

Cym Elan, 1S12: The Retrospect, 678. 

D^MON of the World, The, 94. 

Dante, Sonnet from the Italian of, 629. 

Adapted from a Sonnet in the I'ita Ntwva, 

632. 

Sonnet, to Guido Cavalcanti, 629. 

The First Canzone of the Convito, 630. 

Matilda gathering Flowers (Purgatorio 

xxvii. 1-51), 631. 

Ugolino (Inferno xxxiii. 22-75), 675. 

Death : " Death is here and death is there," 555. 
" They die — the dead ret jm not — Misery, 

502. 
Death, On, 486. 
Death, To, 654. 

Dejection, Stanzas written in, 513. 
Deserts of Sleep, The, 562. 
Despair, 663. 

Devil's Walk, The : A Ballad, 671. 
Dialogue (Death and Mortal) : ' For my dagger 

is bathed in the blood of the brave," 653. 
Dirge, A, 579, 592. 

for the Year, 564. 

Drama, Fragments of an Unfinished, 456. 
Drowned Lover, The, 659. 

Earth, Homer's Hymn to, 613. 
Edward Williams, To, 570. 
Emilia Viviani, To, 409, 566. 
Emmet's Grave, On Robert, 678. 
England in 1819, 522. 
England, To the People of, 521. 

To the Men of, 520. 

Epigrams, from the Greek, 627. 
Epipsychidion, 409. 

Fragments connected with, 419. 

Epitaph, 593. 
Epitaphtum, 652. 



697 



698 



INDEX TO THE POEMS. 



Epithalamium, 571, 662. 

Euganean Hills, Lines written maong the, 507. 

Euripides, The Cyclops of, 615. 

Evening : Ponte a Mare, Pisa, 580. 

To Harriet, 676. 

Exhortation, An, 525. 
Eyes : A Fragment, 655. 

Face, A, 563. 
Faded Violet, On a, 507. 
Falsehood and Vice, 61. 
False Laurels and True, 584. 
Famine, The Tower of, 556. 
Farewell to North Devon, 681. 
Faust, Scenes from, 643. 

Feelings of a Republican on the Fall of Bona- 
parte, 488. 
Fellowship of Souls, 529. 
Fete at Carlton House ; Fragment on a, 678. 
" Fierce Beasts," 519. 
Fiordispina, 561. 

First Canzone of the Convito, The, 630. 
" Follow " (Fragment), 528. 
Forebodings, 529. 

Fragment of a Sonnet — To Harriet, 680. 
Fragment of a Sonnet — Farewell to North 

Devon, 681. 
Fragment of the Elegy on the Death of Dion, 628. 
Fragment, supposed to be an Epithalamium of 

Francis Ravaillac and Charlotte Corday, 662. 
Fragment : " Yes, all is past," 664. 
Fragments of an unfinished Drama, 456. 
Fragments : — 

A Cloud-Chariot, 503. 

Adapted from the Vita Nuovaof Dante, 632. 

A Face, 563. 

" A gentle Story of two Lovers young," 528. 

" Alas ! this is not what I thought Life was," 
563. 

A Lost Leader, 519, 

Ambushed Dangers, 583. 

" And that I walk thus proudly crowned," 
584- 

Appeal to Silence, 518. 

A Roman's Chamber, 530. 

A Tale Untold, 530. 

A Wanderer, 583. 

Consequence, 562. 

False Laurels and True, 584. 

Fellowship of Souls, 529. 

Fiordispina, 561. 

" Follow to the deep wood's Weeds," 528. 

Forebodings, 529. 

From the Wandering Jew, 653. 

" Great Spirit," 584. 

Helen and Henry, 495. 

Home, 495. 

Hope, Fear, and Doubt, 563. 

" I Faint, I Perish, with my Love," 583. 

" I would not be a King, 576. 

Love Immortal, 504. 

Love's Atmosphere, 528. 

Love the Universe, 528. 

Marenghi, 515. 

" Methought I was a Billow in the Crowd." 
583- 

Milton's Spirit, 563. 

Of an Unfinished Drama, 456. 

Of the Elegy on the Death of Adonis, 627. 

Of the Elegy on the Death of Bion, 628. 



Fragments : — 

Omens, 652. 

On Keats, 582. 

" O Thou Immortal Deity," 584. 

Peace surrounding Life, 583. 

Poetry and Music, 529. 

Radiant Sister of the Day, 677, 

Rain, 583. 

Rain and Wind, 530. 

Reminiscence and Desire, 529. 

Rome and Nature, 530. 

Satan at Large, 504. 

Satire on Satire, 558. 

Song of the Furies, 521. 

The Awakener, 583. 

The Deserts of Sleep, 562. 

The Fight was o'er, 504. 

" The Lady of the South," 583, 

" The rude Wind is singing," 584. 

The Stream's Margin, 519. 

The Tomb of Memory, 529. 

Thoughts in Solitude, 504. 

To Byron, 518. 

To Harriet, 671. 

To Italy, 530. 

To Music, 499 

To One freed from Prison, 503. 

To One Singing, 499. 

To the Moon, 593, 

To the People of England, 521. 

Unrisen Splendor, 563. 

Unsatisfied Desire, 504. 

Vine amid Ruins, The, 519. 

Visitations of Calm Thoughts, 529. 

" Wake the Serpent not," 530. 

Weariness, 563. 

" What Men gain fairly," 521. 

Wine of Eglantine, 530. 
Fugitives, The, 566. 
Furies, Song of the, 529. 

" Gather, O gather," 523. 
Gentle Story, A, 528. 
Ginevra, 576. 

Gisborne, Letter to Maria, 376. 
Godwin, On Fanny, 502. 

To Mary WoUstonecraft, 485. 

Goethe's Faust, Scenes from, 643. 
Good Night, 558. 
" Great Spirit," 584. 
Guitar, With a, 591. 

Harriet, To: A Fragment, 671, 680. 

Hate-Song, A, 504. 
Heaven, Ode to, 523. 
Helen and Henry, 495. 
Helen, Rosalind and, 232. 
Helena, Kissing, 627. 
Hellas, 434. 
Prologue to, 573. 

Fragments written for, 576. 

Home, 495. 

Homer: Hymn to Castor and Pollux, 612. 

to the Earth : Mother of All, 613. 

to Mercury, 598. 

to Minerva, 614. 

to the Moon, 612. 

to the Sun, 613. 

to Venus, 614. 

Hope, Fear, and Doubt, 563. 



INDEX TO THE POEMS. 



699 



Horologium, 652. 
Hymn of Apollo, 549. 

of Pan, 550. 

to Intellectual Beauty, 491. 

Ianthb, To, 676. 

Icicle that clung to the Grass of a Grave, On 

an, 667. 
Imitation, An: From the Arabic, 566. 
Indian Serenade, The, 526; Cancelled Passage 

of, 526. 
In Horologium, 652. 
Intellectual Beauty, Hymn to, 491. 
Invitation, The, 589. 
Ireland, To, 671, 676. 
Islam, The Revolt of, 117. 
Isle, The, 593. 
Italy, To, 530. 

Jane. 

The Invitation, 589. 

The Recollection, 590. 

With a Guitar, 591. 

" The keen stars were twinkling," 592. 
Julian and Maddalo, 248. 

Cancelled lines, 258. 

Cancelled fragments of, 2^8. , 

" Jura, on the dark heights of, 656. 

Keats, On, 582. 
Kissing Helena, 627. 

Lady of the South, The, 583. 

Lament, A, 569. 

Lechlade, Gloucestershire, A Summer Evening 
Churchyard at, 487. 

Lerici, Bay of, Lines written in the, 592. 

Leonardo da Vinci, On the Medusa of, 527. 

Letter to Maria Gisborne, 376. 

Liberty, 555 ; Odes to, 542. 

Life, The Triumph of, 474. 

Cancelled passage, 485. 

Lines : " Far, far away, O ye," 565. 

" If I walk in autumn's even, " 5??. 

" That time is dead for ever, child," 502. 

" The cold earth slept below," 4S9. 

to a Critic, 504. 

to a Reviewer, 557. 

" We meet not as we parted," 593. 

" When the Lamp is shattered," 5S8. 

written among the Euganean Hills, 507. 

written during the Castlereagh Administra- 
tion, 520. 

written for Julian and Maddalo, 2 58. 

written for Prometheus Unbound, 530. 

written for Indian Serenade, 526. 

written for Ode to Liberty, 547. 

written for Adonais, 433. 

written for Hellas, 576. 

written for Poem to William Shelley, 502. 

written in the Bay of Lerici, 592. 

written in the Vale of Chamouni, 492. 

written on hearing the News of the Death 

of Napoleon, 568. 

London, On Leaving for Wales, 681, 

Lord Chancellor, To the, 499. 

Lost Leader, A, 519. 

Love, 668. 

Love, Hope, Desire, and Fear, 572. 

Love Immortal, 504. 



Lover, The Drowned, 659. 

Love's Atmosphere, 528. 

Love's Pliilosophy, 528. 

Love's Rose, 655. 

Love the Universe, 528. 

Lyric to the Moon, Variation of the, 530. 

Mab, Queen, 27. 

Maddalo, Julian and, 248. 

Magico Prodigioso, The, of Calderon, 632. 

Cancelled lines, 25S. 

Magnetic Lady to her Patient, The, 588. 

Marenghi, 515. 

Margaret Nicholson. See Posthumous Frag- 
ments of. 

Maria Gisbome, Letter to, 376. 

Marianne's Dream, 496. 

Marseillaise Hymn, Stanza from a Translation 
of the, 666, 

Mary, To (Dedication), 122. 

Mary, To (Answer to Objection), 381. 

Mary, To, who died in this Opinion, 669. 

Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, To, 485. 

Mask of Anarchy, 355 ; Cancelled Stanza of, 531. 

Matilda gathering Flowers, 631. 

May Day Night (, Faust), 645. 

Medusa of Leonardo da Vinci, 527. 

Meludy to a Scene of Former Times, 666. 

Memory, The Tomb of, 529. 

Men of England, Song to the, 520. 

Mercury, Homer's Hymn to, 598. 

" Mighty Eagle," 499. 

Milton's Spirit, 563. 

Minerva, Homer's Hymn to, 614. 

Misery, To, 512. 

Moonbeam, To the, 654. 

Moon, Homer's Hymn to, 6ia. 

The Waning, 555. 

To the, 555, 593, 663. 

Mont Blanc, 492. 

Moschus, From the Greek of, 628, 629. 

Music, 582. 

Music, To, 499; Another Fragment to Music, 
499. 

Mutability, "we are as clouds," 486. 

" The Flower that Smiles To-day," 568. 

Naples, Ode to, 552. 

Napoleon, Lines written on hearing of the 

Death of, 568. 
National Anthem, A New, 522. 
Night, To, 565. 

Nightingale, The Woodman and the, 513. • 
Nile, To the, 506. 
North America, To the Republicans of, 671. 

Ode to Heaven, 523. 

to Liberty, 542 ; Cancelled Passage to, 547. 

To the Assertors of Liberty, 522. 

Cancelled Stanza, 523. 

To Naples, 552. 

to the West Wind, 524, 

CEdipus Tyrannus ; or Swellfoot the Tyrant, 

394- 
Omens, A Fragment, 652. 
On a Faded Violet, 507. 
On Death: "The pale, the cold, and the moony 

smile," 486. 
One Singing, To, 499. 
Orpheus, 559. 



700 



INDEX TO THE POEMS. 



Otho, 502 ; Fragments supposed to be parts of, 

503- 
" O world ! O life ! O time," A Lament, 569. 
Ozymandias, 505. 

Pan, Echo, and the Satyr, 629. 

Hymn of, 550. 

Passage of the Apennines, 506. 
Past, The, 507. 
Peace surrounding Life, 583. 
People of England, To the, 521. 
Peter Bell the Third, 361. 
Plant, The Sensitive, 531, 536. 
Plato, Spirit of, 627. 

From — To Stella, 627. 

Kissing Helena, 627. 

Pleasure, The Birth of, 528. 

Poems from St. Irvyne, or the Rosicrucian, 656. 

Poems to Jane : The Invitation, 589. 

" The keen Stars were twinkling," 592. 
The Recollection, 590. 

With a Guitar, 591. 

to Mary Shelley — (i) 527; (2) 527. 

to William Shelley, 501, 526, 527. 

Poetry and Music, 529. 

Political Characters of 1819, Similes for two, 521. 

Greatness, 569. 

Ponte a Mare, Pisa, Evening, 580. 
Posthumous Fragments, of Margaret Nicholson, 
660. 

Despair, 663. 

Melody to a Scene of Former Times, 666. 

The Spectral Horseman, 665. 

'"Tis midnight now — athwart the murky 
air," 662. 

"Yes! all is past — swift time has fled 
away," 664. 
Prince Athanase, 226. 
Prison, To one freed from, 503. 
Prologue to Hellas, 573. 
Prologue in Heaven (Faust), 643. 
Prometheus, Unbound, 259. 
Proserpine, Song of, 549. 

Queen Mab, 27. 

of my Heart, To the, 674. 

Question, The, 550. 

Rain, 583. 

and Wind, 530. 

Recollection, The, 590. 

Cancelled Passage, 591. 

Remembrance, 569. 

Reminiscence and Desire, 529. 

Republicans of North America, To the, 671. 

Retrospect, The, 678. 

Reviewer, Lines to a, 557. 

Revolt of Islam, The, 117. 

Roman's Chamber, A, 530. 

Rome and Nature, 530. 

Rosa, Sister, 657. 

Rosalind and Helen, 232. 

Rude Wind, The, 584. 

Saint Irvyne's Tower, 658. 

Satan at Large, 504. 

Satire on Satire, Fragment of a, 558. 

St. Irvyne, or the Rosicrucian, Poems from, 656. 

Scene from Tasso, 511. 

Scenes from Calderon's Magico Prodigioso, 632. 



Scenes from Goethe's Faust, 643. 

Sea, a Vision of the, 536. 

Sensitive Plant, The, 53 1 ; Cancelled Passage of, 
536. 

Serenade, The Indian, 526. 

Cancelled Passage, 526. 

Serchio, The Boat on the, 580. 

Shelley, Mary, To (two poems), 527. 

William, To, 501, 526, 527. 

William, Original Draft of the Poem to, 

502. 

Sidmouth and Castlereagh, To, 521. 

Silence, To, 518. 

Similes for two Political Characters of 1819, 521. 

Sister Rosa, 657. 

Skylark, To a, 541. 

Society as it is. Tale of a, 669. 

Solitary, The, 654. 

Solitude, The Spirit of (Alastor), 104. 

Song for Tasso, 511. 

from the Wandering Jew, 653. 

Oi Proserpine, while gathering Flowers on 

the Plain of Enna, 549. 

of the Furies, 529. 

" Rarely, rarely, comest thou," 567. 

to the Men of England, 520. 

Sonnet: England in 1819, 522. 

from the Italian of Cavalcanti, 632. 

from the Italian of Dante, 629. 

" Lift not the painted veil which those who 

live," 518. 

On Launching some Bottles filled with 

Knowledge into the Bristol Channel, 681. 

Political Greatness, 569. 

To a Balloon laden with Knowledge, 681. 

to Byron, 582. 

"Ye hasten to the grave! What seek ye 

there," 557. 
Sophia [Miss Stacey], To, 526. 
South, The Lady of the, 583. 
Spectral Horseman, The, 665. 
Spirit, Great, 584. 
Spirit of Plato, 627. 
Spirits, The Two : An Allegory, 551. 
Stacey, Miss Sophia, 526. 

Stanza from a Translation of the Marseillaise 
Hymn, 676. 

" If I walk in Autumn's even," 583. 

written at Bracknell, 485. 

Stanzas — April 1814,485. 

written in Dejection, near Naples, 513. 

Star, To a, 668. 
Stella, To, 627. 
Story, A gentle, 528. 
Stream's Margin, The, 519. 
Summer and Winter, 556. 

Evening Churchyard, Lechlade, Glouces- 
tershire, 487. 
Sun, Homer's Hymn to, 613. 
Sunset, The, 490. 
Swellfoot the Tyrant, 394. 

Tale of Society, A, as it is: From Facts, 1811, 
669. 

Untold, A, 530. 

"Tasso," Scene from, 511 ; Song for, 511. 

The Fight was o'er, 504. 

Thoughts in Solitude, 504. 

Time, 565. 

Long Past, 562. 



I 



INDEX TO THE POEMS. 



701 



To Death: " Death! where is thy victory?" 654. 

To Mary : " O Mary dear, that you were 

here," 507. 
Tomb of Memory, The, 529. 
To-morrow, 583. 
To One freed from Prison, 503. 
To One Singing, 499. 
To : " I fear thy kisses, gentle maiden, 

547- 
To — 
lo — 



" Music, when soft voices die," 567. 
" One word is too often profaned," 

To : " When Passion's trance is overpast," 

"Yet look on me — take not thine 



571 



571- 



To 

eyes away," 486. 
Tower of Famine, The, 556. 
Triumph of Life, The, 474- 

Ugolino, 675. 

Unfinished Drama, Fragments of an, 456, 

Unrisen Splendor, 563. 

Unsatisfied Desire, 504. 

Variation of the Lyric to the Moon, 530. 
Venus, Homer's Hymn to, 614. 
Vergil's Tenth Eclogue, From, 629. 



Verses on a Cat, 632. 

Victoria, 656. 

Vine amid Ruins, The, 519. 

Violet, on a faded, 507. 

Vision of the Sea, A, 536. 

Visitations of Calm Thoughts, 529. 

Vita Nuova of Dante, Fragment adapted from 

the, 632. 
Viviani, Emilia, To, 409, 566. 

Wanderer, A, 583. 

Wandering Jew, Fragment from the, 653. 

Weariness, 563. 

West Wind, Ode to the, 524. 

" What men gain fairly," 521. 

Williams, Edward, To, 570. 

Wind, The Rude, 584. 

Wine of Eglantine, 530. 

Witch of Atlas, The, 381. 

Woodman and the Nightingale, The, 513. 

Wordsworth, To, 488. 

World's Wanderers, The, 557. 

Year, Dirge for the, 564. 

Zephyr, To the, 583, 
Zucca, The, 58*. 



INDEX OF FIRST LINES.i 



A CAT in distress, 652. 

A gentle story of two lovers young, 528. 

A glorious people vibrated again, 542. 

A golden-winged Angel stood, 504. 

A hater he came and sat by a ditch, 504. 

A man who was about to hang himself, 627. 

A mighty Phantasm, half concealed, 434. 

A pale dream came to a Lady fair, 496. 

A portal as of shadowy adamant, 557. 

A scene which wildered fancy viewed, 678. 

A Sensitive Plant in a garden grew, 531. 

A shovel of his ashes took, 495. * 

A widow bird sate mourning, 474. 

A woodman whose rough heart was out of tune, 

513- 
Ah ! faint are her limbs, and her footstep is 

weary, 659. 
Alas, good friend, what profit can you see, 557. 
Alas ! this is not what I thought life was, 563. 
Ambition, power, and avarice, now have hurled, 

660. 
Amid the desolation of a city, 556. 
And canst thou mock mine agony, thus calm, 

663. 
And earnest to explore within — around, 631. 
And ever as he went he swept a lyre, 433. 
And, if my grief should still be dearer to me, 

457- 
And like a dying lady, lean and pale, 555. 
And many there were hurt by that strong boy, 

572. 
And Peter Bell, when he had been, 363. 
And that I walk thus proudly crowned withal, 

584. 
And the green Paradise which western waves. 

And then came one of sweet and earnest looks, 

434- 
And what is that most brief and bright delight, 

421. 
And where is truth? On tombs? for such to 

thee, 529. 
And who feels discord now or sorrow, 528. 
An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king, 

522. 
Arethusa arose, 548. 
Ariel to Miranda. — Take, 591. 
Arise, arise, arise, 522. 
Art thou indeed forever gone, 666. 



Art thou pale for weariness, 555. 

As a violet's gentle eye, 530. 

As from an ancestral oak, 521. 

As I lay asleep in Italy, 355. 

As the sunrise to the night, 530. 

At the creation of the Earth, 528. 

Away ! the moor is dark beneath the moon, 485. 

Bear witness, Erin ! when thine injured isle, 671. 
Before those cruel Twins, whom at one birth, 382. 
Beside the dimness of the glimmering sea, 171. 
Best and brightest, come away, 589. 
Bright ball of flame that thro' the gloom of even, 

_ 681. 
Bright wanderer, fair coquette of heaven, 593. 
Brothers ! between you and me, 671. 
" Buona notte, buona notte ! " — Come mai, 559. 
By the mossy brink, 668. 

Calm art thou as yon sunset ! swift and strong, 

168. 
Chameleons feed on light and air, 525. 
Come, be happy ! — sit near me, 512. 
Come hither, my sweet Rosalind, 232. 
Come, thou awakener of the spirit's ocean, 583. 
Corpses are cold in the tomb, 520. 

Dares the llama, most fleet of the sons of the 

wind, 667. 
Dar'st thou amid the varied multitude, 654. 
Daughters of Jove, whose voice is melody, 612. 
Dearest, best and brightest, 677. 
Dear home, thou scene of earliest hopes and 

joys, 495. 
Death is here and death is there, 555. 
Death! where is thy victory, 654. 
Do evil deeds thus quickly come to end, 341. 
** Do you not hear the Aziola cry, 569. 

Eagle ! why soarest thou above that tomb, 627. 
Earth, ocean, air, beloved brotherhood, 104. 
Ever as now with Love and Virtue's glow, 680. 

Faint with love, the lady of the South, 583. 
Fairest of the Destinies, 576. 
False friend, wilt thou smile or weep, 348. 
Far, far away,0 ye, 565. 

Flourishing vine, whose kindling clusters glow, 
519- 



1 Including the first lines of some Lyrics which appear in the longer poems. 

702 



INDEX OF FIRST LINES. 



703 



Follow to the deep wood's weeds, 528. 

For me, my friend, if not that tears did tremble, 

503- 
For my dagger is bathed in the blood of the 

brave, 653. 

From all the blasts of heaven thou hast de- 
scended, 275. 

From the cities where from caves, 531. 

From the forests and highlands, 550. 

Gather, O gather, 523. 

Ghosts of the dead ! have I not heard your yell- 
ing, 656. 

God prosper, speed, and save, 522. 

Good-night ! ah ! no ; the hour is ill, 558. 

Grant me your patience. Gentlemen and Boars, 
402. 

Great Spirit, whom the sea of boundless thought, 
584. 

Guido, I would that Lapo, thou, and I, 629. 

Hail to thee, blithe spirit, 541. 

Hail to thee, Cambria! for the unfettered wind, 

681. 
Hark ! the owlet flaps his wings, 652. 
He came like a dream in the dawn of life, 457. 
Heigho ! the lark and the owl ! 474. 
" Here lieth One whose name was writ on 

water," 582. 
Here, my dfear friend, is a new book for you, 419. 
Here, oh, here, 294. 
Her hair was brown, her sphered eyes were 

brown, 231. 
Her voice did quiver as we parted, 502. 
He wanders, like a day-appearing dream, 583. 
Hie sinu fessum caput hospitali, 652. 
His face was like a snake's — wrinkled and loose, 

563- 
Honey from silkworms who can gather, 504. 
Hopes, that swell in youthful breasts, 655. 
How eloquent are eyes, 655. 
How, my dear Mary, are you critic-bitten, 381. 
How stern are the woes of the desolate mourner, 

659. 
How sweet it is to sit and read the tales, 529. 
How swiftly through heaven's wide expanse, 658. 
How wonderful is Death, 27. 
How wonderful is Death, 94. 

I AM as a spirit who has dwelt, 529. 

I am drunk with the honey wine, 530. 

I ariss from dreams of thee, 526. 

I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers, 

540. 
[ could stand, 676. 

I dreamed that, as I wandered by the way, 550. 
I dreamed that Milton's spirit rose, and took, 

563- 
I faint, I perish with my love ! I grow, 583. 
I fear thy kisses, gentle maiden, 547. 
I hated thee, fallen tyrant! I did groan, 488. 
I love thee, Baby ! for thine own sweet sake, 676. 
I loved — alas! our life is love, 511. 
I met a traveller from an antique land, 505. 
I mourn Adonis dead — loveliest Adonis, 627. 
I pant for the music which is divine, 582. 
I rode one evening with Count Maddalo, 248. 
I sate beside the steersman then, and, gazing, 189. 
I sing the glorious Power with azure eyes, 614. 
[ stood within the city disinterred, 552. 



I weep for Adonais — he is dead, 423. 

I went into the deserts of dim sleep, 562. 

I would not be a king — enough, 576. 

If gibbets, axes, confiscations, chains, 558. 

If I esteemed you less. Envy would kill, 582. 

If I walk in Autumn's even, 583. 

Inter marmoreas Leonora pendula colles, 652. 

In the cave which wild weeds cover, 530. 

In the great morning of the world, 437. 

In the sweet solitude of this calm place, 632. 

Is it that in some brighter sphere, 529, 

Is not to-day enough ? Why do 1 peer, 529. 

It floats with rainbow pinions o'er the stream, 

421. 
It is not blasphemy to hope that Heaven, 680. 
It is the day when ail the sons of God, 573. 
It lieth, gazing on the midnight sky, 527. 
It was a bright and cheerful afternoon, 556. 

Kissing Helena, together, 627. 

Let those who pine in pride or in revenge, 515. 

Life of Life! thy lips enkindle, 285. 

Lift not the painted veil which those who liv«^ 

518. 
Like the ghost of a dear friend dead, 562. 
Listen, listen, Mary mine, 5o<>. 

Madonna, wherefore hast thou sent to me, 566. 
Maiden, quench the glare of sorrow, 669. 
Many a green isle needs must be, 507. 
Melodious Arethusa, o'er my verse, 629. 
Men of England, wherefore plough, 520. 
Methought a star came down from heaven, 459. 
Methought I was a billow in the crowd, ^83. 
Mighty eagle ! thou that soarest, 499. 
Mine eyes were dim with tears unsheo, 48^ 
Monarch of Gods and Daemons, and ^l Spiriti, 

262. 
Month after month the gathered rains descend, 

506. 
Moonbeam, leave the shadowy vale, 654. 
Muse, sing the deeds of golden Aphrodite, 614. 
Music, when soft voices die, i;67. 
My coursers are fed with the lightning, 284. 
My dearest Mary, wherefore hast thou gone, 

527- 
My faint spirit was sitting in the light, 566. 
My head is heavy, my limbs are wi;ary, 563 
My head is wild with weeping for a grief, 519. 
My lost William, thou in whom, 526. 
My Song, I fear that thou wilt find but few, 409- 
My soul is an enchanted boat, 2S5. 
My spirit like a charmed bark doth swim, 499. 
My thoughts arise and fade in solitude, 504. 

Night, with all thine eyes look down, 571. 
Night! with all thine eyes look down, 572. 
No access to the Duke ! You liave not said, 511. 
No, Music, thou art not the " food of Love,'* 

499. 
No trump tells thy virtues — the grave where they 

rest, 678. 
Nor happiness, nor majesty, nor fame, 569. 
Not far from hence. From yonder pointed hill, 

559- , 
Now the last day of many days, 590. 

O Bacchus, what a world of toil, both aow, 61 j. 
O, follow, follow, 278. 



704 



INDEX OF FIRST LINES. 



O happy Earth ! reality of Heaven, 56. 

O happy Earth ! realit\ of Heaven, 98. 

O Mary dear, that you were here, 507. 

O mighty mind, in whose deep stream this age, 

5i«. 
O pillow cold and wet with tears, 526. 
O that a chariot of cloud were mine, 503. 
U thou bright Sun ! beneath the dark blue line, 

676. 
O thou immortal deity, 584. 
O thou, who phnned with strong desire, 551. 
O thou whose dear love gleamed upon the 

gloomy path, 671. 
O universal mother, who dost keep, 613. 
O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's 

being, 524. 
O world 1 O life ! O time, 569. 
Offspring of Jove, Calliope, once more, 613. 
Oh ! take the pure gem to where southerly 

breezes, 667. 
Oh ! there are spirits of the air, 488. 
Old wmter was gone, 579. 
On the brink of the night and the morning, 

284. 
Once, early in the morning, 671. 
One sung of thee who left the tale untold, 530. 
One word is too often profaned, 571. 
Oiphan hours, the year is dead, 564. 
Our boat is asleep on berchio's stream, 580. 
Out of the eastern shadow of the Earth, 485. 
Over the utmost hill at length 1 sped, 158. 

Palace-roof of cloudless nights, 523. 

Pan loved his neighbor Echo — but that child, 

629. 
People of England, ye who toil and groan, 

523- 
Perhaps the only comfort which remains, 259. 
Peter Bells, ivne, two, and three, 362. 
Place, for the Marshal of the Mask, 461. 
Poet of Nature, thou hast wept to know, 488. 
Prince Athanase had one beloved friend, 228. 

Radiant Sister of the Day, 677. 
Rarely, rarely, comest thou, 567. 
Reach me that handkerchief ! — my brain is 

hurt, 324. 
Returning from its daily quest, my Spirit, 632. 
Rome has fallen, ye see it lying, 530. 
Rough wind, thou meanest loud, 592. 

Sacred Goddess, Mother Earth, 549. 

See yon opening flower, 653. 

Shall we roam, my love, 674. 

She comes not ; yet I left her even now, 332. 

She left me at the silent time, 592. 

She saw me not — she heard me not — alone, 21 1. 

She was an ag^d woman ; and the years, 66g. 

Silence ! O ^ell are Death and Sleep and Thou, 

^.518. / 

Silver key of the fountain of tears, 499. 

Sing, Muse, the son of Maia and of Jove, 598. 

" Sleep, sleep on ! forget thy pain, 588. 

So now my summer task is ended, Mary, 122. 

So we sate joyous as the morning ray, 181. 

Such hope, as is the sick despair of good, 563. 

Such was Zonoras ; and as daylight finds, 229. 

Summer was dead and Autumn was expiring, 

586. 
Sweet Spirit ! Sister of that orphan one, 409. 



Sweet star, which gleaming o'er the darksome 

scene, 668. 
Swift as a spirit hastening to his task, 474. 
Swifter far than summer's flight, 569. 
Swiftly walk over the western wave, 565. 

Tell me, thou star, whose wings of light, 557. 
That matter of the murder is husht up, 311. 
That night we anchored in a woody bay, 195. 
That time is dead forever, child, 502. 
The awful shadow of some unseen Power, 491. 
The babe is at peace within the womb, 583. 
The billows on the beach are leaping around it, 

501. 
The cold earth slept below, 489. 
The death-bell beats, 657. 

The Elements respect their Maker's seal, 653. 
The everlasting universe of things, 492. 
The fierce beasts of the woods and wildernesses, 

519. 
The fiery mountains answer each other, 555. 
The fight was o'er : the flashing through the 

gloom, 504. 
The fitful alternations of the rain, 530. 
The flower that smiles to-day, 568. 
The Fountains mingle with the River, 528. 
The gentleness of rain was in the wind, 583. 
The golden gates of Sleep unbar, 571. 
The joy, the triumph, the delight, the madness, 

299. 
The keen stars were twinkling, 592. 
The odor from the flower is gone, 507. 
The old man took the oars, and soon the bark, 

152. 
The pale stars are gone, 294 
The pale, the cold, and the moony smile, 486. 
The rose that drinks the fountain dew, 499. 
The rude wind is singing, 584. 
The season was the cliildhood of sweet June, 561. 
The serpent is shut out from paradise, 570. 
The sleepless Hours who watch me as I lie, 549. 
The spider spreads her webs, whether she be, 

376- 
The starlight smile of children, the sweet looks, 

136. 
The sun is set ; the swallows are asleep, 580. 
The sun is warm, the sky is clear, 513. 
The sun makes music as of old, 643. 
The transport of a fierce and monstrous gladness, 

216. 
The viewless and invisible Consequence, 562. 
The warm sun is failing, the bleak wind is wail- 
ing, 555. 
The waters are flashing, 566. 
The wind has swept from the wide atmosphere, 

487- 
The world is dreary, 527. 
The world is now our dwelling-place, 502. 
The world's great age begins anew, 452. 
Their moss rotted off them, flake by flake, 536. 
There is a voice, not understood by all, 495. 
There is a warm and gentle atmosphere, 528. 
There late was One within whose subtle being, 

490. 
There was a little lawny islet, 593. 
There was a Power in this sweet place, 533. 
There was a youth, who, as with toil and travel, 

226. 
These are two friends whose lives were undi^ 

vided, 593. 



INDEX OF FIRST LINES. 



705 



They die — the dead return not — Misery, 502. 
This is the day, which down the void abysm, 303. 
Those whom nor power, nor lying faith, nor toil, 

503- 
Thou art fair, and few are fairer, 526. 
Thou art the wine whose drunkenness is all, 231. 
Thou supreme Goddess ! by whose power divine, 

395- 
Thou wert not, Cassius, and thou couldst not be, 

502. 
Thou wert the morning star among the living, 

627. 
Three days the flowers of the garden fair, 534. 
Thus to be lost and thus to sink and die, 498. 
Thy country's curse is on thee, darkest crest, 

499. 
Thy dewy looks sink in my breast, 485. 
Thy little footsteps on the sands, 527. 
'T is midnight now — athwart the murky air, 662. 
' T is the terror of tempest. The rags of the sail, 

536. 
To the deep, to the deep. 281. 
To thirst and find no fill — to wail and wander, 

504- 

Tremble Kings despised of man, 666. 

'T was at the season when the Earth upsprings, 
230. 

'T was dead of the night, when I sat in my dwell- 
ing, 656. 

Unfathomable Sea ! whose waves are years, 

565. 
Unrisen splendor of the brightest sun, 563. 

Vessels of heavenly medicine ! may the breeze, 

681. 
Victorious wrong, with vulture scream, 451. 

Wake the serpent not — lest he, 530. 
Was there a human spirit in the steed, 202. 
Wealth and dominion fade into the mass, 504. 
We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon, 

486. 
We meet not as we parted, 593. 
We strew these opiate flowers, 436. 
Weep not, my gentle boy ; he struck but me, 318. 
Were it not a sweet refuge, Emily, 422. 



Were not the crocuses that grew, 591. 

What ! alive and so bold, oh earth, 568. 

What art thou, Presumptuous, who profanest, 
584. 

What is that joy which serene infancy, 421. 

What Mary is when she a little smiles, 632. 

What men gain fairly — that they should pos- 
sess, 521. 

What think you the dead are, 258. 

What thoughts had sway o'er Cythna's lonely 
slumber, 145. 

What was the shriek that struck fancy's ear, 665. 

When a lover clasps his fairest, 529. 

When passion's trance is overpast, 571. 

When soft winds and sunny skies, 583. 

When the lamp is shattered, 588. 

When the last hope of trampled France had 
failed, 124. 

When winds that move not its calm surface 
sweep, 628. 

Where art thou, beloved To-morrow, 583. 

Where man's profane and tainting hand, 681. 

Whether the Sensitive Plant, or that, 536. 

Whilst monarchs laughed upon their thrones, 61. 

Whose is the love that, gleaming thro' the world, 

27- 
Why is it said thou canst not live, 668. 
Wild, pale, and wonder-stricU.2v., even as one, 

576. 
Wilt thou forget the happy hours, 507. 
Within a cavern of man's tiackless spirit, 547. 
Worlds on worlds are rolling ever, 439. 
Would I were the winged cloud, 446. 
Would you not like a broomstick? As forme, 

645- 

Ye congregated powers of heaven, who share, 

286. 
Ye Dorian woods and waves lament alcud, 628. 
Ye gentle visitations of calm thought, 529. 
Ye hasten to the gravel What -eek ye there, 

557- 
Ye who intelligent the third heaven mnve, 6;o. 
Ye wild-eved Muses, sing the Twins of jove, 

612. 
Yesl all is past — swift time has tied away, 664. 
Yet look on me — take not thine eyes away, 486. 



34 



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